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THE MELANESIAN LANGUAGES
Norite Opinions of (press.
“ The book is written with all the ripe knowledge of one who has
lived and taught for years among the natives of Melanesia, and it
offers a welcome contribution to the solution of an obscure problem of
scientific philology.”—Academy.
“ We can commend it to all students and scholars who are interested
in the questions and problems with which it deals.”—British Quarterly
Review.
“ It will be duly prized by philologists.”— Westminster Review.
“It is difficult for the most exacting critic to find either omissions or
redundancies, while an excellent map at the beginning will show those
whose ideas about Melanesia are not quite definite its precise position in
the chart of the world.”—Guardian.
“A most important contribution to linguistic science. . . . The
patience, the care, the acuteness, above all the good sense manifested
throughout the work cannot be too highly praised, and the value of the
book will increase with time.”—New York Evening Post.
O^forb
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
LONDON: HENRY EROWDE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AMEN CORNER, E.C.MELANESIAN
ANTHROPOLOGY AND POLK-LORE
CODR1NGTONITonbort
1IENRY FROWDE
Oxford University Press Warehouse
Amen Corner, E.C.



AJfrHHtiJPi't ••
«*?♦ • m ■ m
»•

t ' *■, S' :)
w n.-r r;THE MELANESIANS
STUDIES IN THEIR
ANTHROPOLOGY AND FOLK-LORE
BY
R. H. CODRINGTON, D.D.
LATE OF THE MELANESIAN MISSION
SOMETIME FELLOW OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD
AUTHOR OF ‘THE MELANESIAN LANGUAGES’
With Illustrations
Oxford
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1891
[All rights reserved]A. \ 2.0
©jforS
PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
BY HOKACJ-: HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITYPREFACE.
It has been my endeavour in the following pages to
bring together the results of such observations as many
years’ acquaintance with Melanesian people has enabled
me to make. I had once hoped to have been able to give
something more like a full account of the beliefs and
practices of the natives of those islands concerning which
I have had the opportunity of collecting information; but
my stay upon my last return to the Melanesian Mission
was too short for this, and I have now to put forth what I
know to be very incomplete.
My observations and enquiries were carried on, and my
notes were made, in the years from 1863, when I first
visited the islands, to 1887, when I left the Mission ; partly
in the Melanesian Islands, but mostly in Norfolk Island,
where natives of many of these islands have for many
years been brought together for instruction. Twice during
this period I made with natives of the various islands a
systematic enquiry into the religious beliefs and practices of
the Melanesians, and the social regulations and conditions
prevailing among them. On the first occasion I had, as re-
gards the Banks’ Islands, the very valuable assistance of a
native who was a grown youth before his people had been
at all affected by intercourse with Europeans or had heard
any Christian teaching—the Rev. George Sarawia, the first,VI
Preface.
and now for many years the leader, of the native clergy of
that group. The results of these first enquiries appeared
briefly in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of
February, 1881 ; and these were carefully reviewed by me
during my last stay in Norfolk Island in 1866 and 1867.
I was so fortunate then as to meet there several old friends
and pupils who had come down, for their health’s sake and
for other reasons, after a residence as teachers among their
own people. They had been living in their various islands
in a position and at an age which would make them ac-
quainted with the views and habits of their countrymen,
and they were able, and, I believe, entirely willing, to com-
municate freely what they knew. It happened thus that I
was able to go through the subjects which are treated of in
this book with native instructors from the Solomon Islands,
the Banks’ Islands, and the Northern New Hebrides ; with
Marsden Manekalea from Ysabel, Benjamin Bele from
Florida, Joseph Wate from Saa, Walter Woser from Motlav,
Arthur Arudulewari from Aurora, Lewis Tariliu from
Pentecost, Martin Tangabe from Lepers’ Island ; every one
of them, in my opinion, a competent and trustworthy witness,
though all were not equally intelligent.
It has been my purpose to set forth as much as possible
what natives say about themselves, not what Europeans
say about them. For this reason, though the results of my
own personal observations are given, I have refrained from
asking or recording, except in a few instances where
acknowledgment is made, the information which my
colleagues in the Mission would have abundantly and
willingly imparted. No one can be more sensible than
myself of the incompleteness and insufficiency of what I
venture to publish; I know that I must have made many
mistakes and missed much that I might have learnt. I
have felt the truth of what Mr. Fison, late missionary inPreface.
vii
Fiji, to whom I am indebted for much instruction, has
written: 1 When a European has been living for two or
three years among savages he is sure to be fully convinced
that he knows all about them ; when he has been ten years
or so amongst them, if he be an observant man, he finds
that he knows very little about them, and so begins to
learn.’ My own time of learning has been all too short.
I have endeavoured as far as possible to give the natives’
account of themselves by giving what I took down from
then’ lips and translating what they wrote themselves. It
is likely that under the circumstances of such enquiries
much of the worst side of native life may be out of sight,
and the view given seem generally more favourable than
might be expected ; if it be so, I shall not regret it.
I should have been glad if space had allowed me to treat
at greater length the subject of the native Arts of Life, and
to have given more of the Tales, which throw so much
light upon native life and thought. The comparison of the
Melanesian languages, customs, beliefs, and arts, with those
of the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, will fix the
ethnological place of the Melanesian people while it aids
the general study of mankind.
In conclusion, this book, though written by a missionary,
with his full share of the prejudices and predilections
belonging to missionaries, is not meant to have what is
generally understood to be a missionary character ; but the
writer is persuaded that one of the first duties of a mis-
sionary is to try to understand the people among whom he
works, and to this end he hopes that he may have con-
tributed something that may help.
Wadhurst :
March 12, 1S91.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Groups of Melanesian Islands. Connexion East and West. Discovery.
Spanish, French, English Discoverers. Names of Islands, native and
geographical. Identification. Condition on discovery. Native view of
discoverers. Geology. Volcanos. Coral. Reef Islands. Lakes. Water-
falls. Zoology. .......... pp. 1-19
CHAPTER II.
SOCIAL REGULATIONS. DIVISIONS OF THE PEOPLE.
KINSHIP AND MARRIAGE CONNEXION.
Ethnology, Origin. Division of people into Exogamous Classes, or Kin-
dreds, with Succession through the Mother. No Tribes. Exception in
Eastern Solomon Islands. Intercourse of sexes regulated and restricted.
Incest. Guest-wives. Division into two Kins. Banks’Islands; Families,
Adoption. New Hebrides. Question of Communal marriage. Testi-
mony of language. Nearness of blood. Plural Divisions, Florida,
Bugotu. Abomination, buto. Totems. Custom at Ulawa. Shifting-
predominance of Florida Tcema. Relation of sister’s son and mother’s
brother. Banks’ Island System of Relationship, in Kinship, Family, by
Marriage. Pedigree of Mota family. Step-father. Terms of relation-
ship in Florida. System where descent follows the Father. Reserve.
Avoidance, in Banks’ Islands. Disuse of Names as words. New
Hebrides ............	20-45X
Contents.
CHAPTER III.
SOCIAL REGULATIONS. CHIEFS.
Chiefs recognised by visitors. Their Power in Solomon Islands, Banks’
Islands, and New Hebrides. Absence of History and Tradition.
Remarkable exception at Saa. Origin of that settlement. Chiefs there.
Hereditary element. Chiefs in Florida ; in Banks’ Islands. Alterna-
tion of predominance in Kindreds. Chiefs in New Hebrides, Lepers’
Island ............ 46-5S
CHAPTER IY.
PROPERTY AND INHERITANCE.
General agreement as to Property and Succession. Divisions of Land,
Bush, Gardens, Town. Sale of Land. Property in Fruit-trees. Tendency
to succession of son to father. Solomon Islands, Florida. Land and
Personal property. Banks’ Islands, Redemption of father’s land, Sale
of land, Wills. New Hebrides, Pentecost Island, Lepers’ Island .	59-68
CHAPTER V.
SECRET SOCIETIES AND MYSTERIES.
Wide extent of Secret Societies in Melanesia. Difference from Austra-
lian Mysteries; no ‘Making young men.’ Social importance. Exclu-
sion of women. Conspicuous feature in native life. Banks’ Islands,
Tamate, ‘ Ghosts ’; masks; badges; lodges. Safagoro ; hats; mysterious
sounds ; admission ; seclusion of neophytes; license. Smaller Societies.
Qatu ; dance ; initiation. New Hebrides, Aurora Island. Handiwork
of‘ghosts.’ Native account of Initiations. Dances. Pentecost Island.
The Qeta. Solomon Islands, Florida. Matambala; origin; native
account; downfall of the Mystery .	.	.	.	.	.	.69-100
CHAPTER VI.
SOCIETIES. CLUBS.
Presence of these Societies conspicuous in Torres Islands, Banks’ Islands,
and New Hebrides. The Gamal, club-house; the Club, the Suqe.
Ranks. Social importance. Banks’ Islands, Mota. Images ; hats. Santa
Maria, Torres Islands. Admission and advance in rank ; Method and
forms. Feasts ; dress. Women’s Club. KoleJcole; decorations. Charms ;
Feast of deliverance. New Hebrides, Aurora, Lepers’ Island. Ranks
and titles. Pentecost Island
101-115Contents.
xi
CHAPTER VII.
RELIGION.
Difficulty of the subject. Language of Natives and Europeans. Mana;
stones; charms. Spirits and Ghosts distinguished by natives. Differ-
ence between religion of Eastern and Western Melanesia. Misuse of
terms ; 1 god ’ and ‘ devil.’ Banks’ Islands, Spirits, vui. Solomon Is-
lands, tindcilo, Ghosts of worship. Example of Ganindo. Prayers and
offerings .	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.117-127
CHAPTER VIII.
SACRIFICES.
Offerings at meals to the Dead. Difference between Sacrifices in Eastern
and Western Melanesia. Solomon Islands ; Sacrifice to ghosts; example
at San Cristoval. Florida sacrifices, public and private; first-fruits;
for war; for crops. Human sacrifices. Seven sacrifices at Saa. San
Cristoval; Substitution. Santa Cruz. Banks’ Islands; Offerings to
Spirits at stones ; with money. Familiar spirits. New Hebrides, Aurora,
Pentecost, Lepers’ Island, Ambrym ......	128-144
CHAPTER IX.
PRAYERS.
Prayers and Invocations. To Ghosts in Solomon Islands, Florida, San
Cristoval, Saa. To Spirits in Banks’ Islands, Motlav, Mota. Invocations
at sea. New Hebrides .........	145-149
CHAPTER X.
SPIRITS.
Little prominence of belief in Spirits in Solomon Islands. Kahausibware.
Banks’ Islands, vui. Native conceptions ; two orders of spirits. Nopitu.
Qat; Creation. Story and adventures of Qat; Marawa, Qasavara. Story
of flood. Santa Cruz. New Hebrides. Tagaro and Sup we; Creation ;
Winged women. Changeling spirits ......	150-172
CHAPTER XI.
SACRED PLACES AND THINGS.
Images not idols. Stones. Solomon Islands, Places of sepulture sacred ;
Shrines. Other sacred places, Streams. Florida, Bugotu. Sharks, snakes,
frigate-birds, crocodiles. Banks’ Islands and New Hebrides; Stones,
heaps, streams and pools, trees, sharks, snakes, changeling snakes, king-
fishers ....	.......	i73-19°Contents.
xii
CHAPTER XII.
MAGIC.
Mana, and equivalent terms. Native belief in magic, (i) Sickness:
causes. Solomon Islands. Treatment with charms ; medicine. Ghosts
fighting; Sea-ghosts. Santa Cruz. Banks’ Islands. New Hebrides.
(2) Weather: weather doctoring; Banks’Islands, charms. (3) Witch-
craft : fragments of food; bones; 1 ghost-shooter ’; Metamorphosis.
(4) Dreams: dreamers. (5) Prophecy: possession by ghosts; prophets.
(6) Divination: methods in Solomon Islands and Banks’ Islands.
(7' Ordeals. (8) Poison. (9) Tapu, taboo: Curses; Oaths. .	191-217
CHAPTER XIII.
POSSESSION. INTERCOURSE WITH GHOSTS.
Madness believed to be possession by Spirits or Ghosts. Other forms of
possession. Omens. Vampires. Tricks played by ghosts on men; by
men with ghosts. Form of possession in Torres Islands. Tricks.
Sneezing. .	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.218-227
CHAPTER XIV.
BIRTH. CHILDHOOD. MARRIAGE.
Couvade ; abortion; infanticide; twins. Birth. Weaning; nose-boring;
clothing. Reserve. Separation of sexes. Initiation at Saa. Circumcision ;
tattoo. Intercourse of sexes; harlots. Betrothal and Marriage. Adul-
tery. Divorce. Levirate. Widowhood; mourning. Polygamy, Poly-
andry ............	228-246
CHAPTER XV.
DEATH. BURIAL. AETER DEATH.
Death. Soul called shadow. Native words translated soul, in Florida,
Banks’ Islands, New Hebrides. Ghosts, two classes. Burial customs in
Florida and Bugotu. Hades; ship and bridge of the dead. San Cris-
toval, Sea-ghosts. Saa, ghosts; Hades; burial; relics; memorials.
Santa Cruz. Torres Islands. Banks’ Islands. Panoi. Origin of death ;
burial; driving away ghost; funeral feasts ; death-days; state of the
dead ; judgment. Descents to Panoi. Aurora. Journey of the dead ;
funeral; death-meals. Lepers’ Island. Origin of death; burial;
Hades. Pentecost Island. Burying alive .....	247-289
Contents.	xiii
CHAPTER XVI.
ARTS OF LIFE.
Outrigger-canoes ; plank-built canoes ; voyages; trade. Houses: dwel-
ling-houses ; canoe-houses; pile-houses ; tree-houses; forts; stone-
buildings. Cultivations. Weapons. Fighting. Bows ; slings; poisoned
arrows. Shell .and stone implements ; pottery; stone-boiling. Fishing:
hooks; floats; nets; kites; traps. Food; Cookery. Native cloth; Dress.
Money: mat-money; feather-money; shell-money ; money-lending.
Decorative Arts, in Solomon Islands, Santa Cruz, Banks’ Islands .	290-331
CHAPTER XVII.
DANCES. MUSIC. GAMES.
Dances. Songs. Drums; pipes ; stringed instrument; -Eolian flute.
Games. Toys: kites; bull-roarer; rattles .....	332-342
CHAPTER XVIII.
MISCELLANEOUS.
Cannibalism. Head-taking. Castaways. Slaves. Burning alive. Sun;
moon; stars; eclipses. Months and Seasons. Narcotics. Counting;
Measures. Salutations. Wild men................... 343-355
CHAPTER XIX.
STORIES.
I.	Animal Stories.—1. Heron and Turtle. 2. Three Fish. 3. Rat and
Rail. 4. Birds’ Voyage. 5. Shark and Snake. 6. Hen and Chickens.
II.	Myths, Tales of Origins.—1. Kamakajaku. 2. Samuku. 3. The
Mim. 4. Muesarava. 5. Tagaro’s Departure. 6. How Tagaro made
the Sea. 7. How Tagaro found Fish. 8. How the old Woman made
the Sea. III. Wonder Tales. —1. Dilingavuv. 2. Story of an Eel.
3. Molgon and Molwor. 4. Ghost-wife. 5. Ganviviris. 6. The Little
Orphan. 7. The Woman and Eel. 8. The Little Owl. 9. The Winged
Wife. 10. Taso. 11. Betawerai. 12. Basi and Dovaowari. 13. Dei-
tari. 14. Tarkeke. 15. The Woman and Ghost. 16. Tagaro the
Little. 17. Merambuto and Tagaro........................356-411LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Frontispiece. Stone buildings at Gaua, Santa Maria, Banks’ Islands
From a sketch by the Author.
1. Map and Elevation of Mota. Sugarloaf Island, Banks’ Islands	15
2. Masked Figure from New Caledonia .	...	70
From a photograph.
3.	Masked Figure of a Banks’ Islands Tam ate........73
From a photograph by the Author.
4.	Tamate at Valuwa. Saddle Island, Banks’ Islands ...	78
From a sketch by the Author.
5,	6. Tamate Hats or Masks. Banks’ Islands..........79
From sketches by the Author.
7.	Masked Figures at Aurora Island, New Hebrides .	.	.	91
From a photograph by Rev. C. Bice.
8.	Lano Hats or Masks. Banks’ Islands...............104
From a drawing by a native.
9.	Malo-saru Dancing Dress. Banks’ Islands .	.	.108
From a specimen in the British Museum.
10.	A Sea-ghost shooting a man fishing, at Saa, Solomon Islands .	197
From a drawing by a native.
11.	A Sea-ghost. San Cristoval, Solomon Islands .	....	259
From a drawing by a native.
12.	A New Hebrides Canoe .........	291
From a sketch by the Author.
13.	A Mota Canoe. Banks’Islands .......	292
From a photograph by the Author.
14.	A Santa Cruz Canoe .........	293
From a. sketch by the Author.
15.	Spear-rest in a Florida Canoe. Solomon Islands ....	295
From a sketch by the Author.Lzst of Illustrations.
xv
TACK
16.	Figure-head of a Florida Canoe...................................296
From a sketch by the Author.
17.	A House at Tega. Ysabel, Solomon Islands.........................300
From a sketch by the Author.
18.	Shafts of Arrows. Santa Maria, Banks’Islands .	.	.	.	311
Drawn from specimens in the Author s collection by Rev.
H. H. Min chin.
19.	Shell Adze from Torres Islands, in the Author’s collection .	.312
Drawn by Rev. H. H. Minchin.
20.	Shell tool from Santa Cruz, in the Author’s collection ; to be turned
either way, and used as adze or axe .	.	.	.	.	*313
Drawn by Rev. H. M. Minchin.
21.	Shell Adze from Lepers’ Island, New Hebrides, in the Author’s
collection .	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	*314
Drawn by Rev. H. H. Minchin.
22.	Stone Adze from San Cristoval, Solomon Islands, in the Blackmore
Museum, Salisbury .........	314
23.	Breadfruit Chopper from Mota, Banks’ Islands, in the Blackmore
Museum, Salisbury .	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.315
2\. Shell Adze from Mota, Banks’ Islands, in the Blackmore Museum,
Salisbury.....................................................315
25.	Float for catching Flying-fish, from Santa Cruz, in the Blackmore
Museum, Salisbury .	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	317
26.	Float for catching Flying-fish, from Malanta, Solomon Islands, in the
Author’s collection .	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.317
Drawn by Rev. H. H. Minchin.
27.	Sketch by the Author showing the Dress of Men and Women at
Bellona Island, Solomon Islands .	.	.	.	.	.	*322
28.	Lime-box from Ysabel, Solomon Islands, in the Author’s collection .	328
Drawn by Rev. H. H. Minchin.
29.	Incised and whitened pattern on a Cocoa-nut Water-bottle from
Ysabel, in the Author’s collection	.	.	.	.	.	.	328
From a rubbing.
30.	Incised patterns of two Banks’ Islands Ear-ornaments .	.	*329
31.	Incised ornament cut by A. Arudulewari of Aurora Island, New
Hebrides......................................................33°
Draivn by Rev. 3. IT. Minchin.
32.	Incised and whitened ornament from Ysabel, Solomon Islands .	331
From a rubbing.
33.	Drums at Ambrym, New Hebrides .......	337
From a photograph by Capt. Acland, R.N.NOTE.
The orthography in use in the various native languages is not generally
here employed in native words, but it occasionally appears. In such cases it
is enough to observe that b = mb, d = nd, n is ng, g is ngg, and that^y and g
represent peculiar sounds. Excuse must be offered for the very ill-looking
ngg, representing the ng in ‘finger’; a sound so distinct from the ng in
‘ singer’ that it is impossible to use, as in English, the same symbol for both.
It is necessary to note that ng here always stands as ng in c singer.’CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
There are four groups of islands, within that region of the
Western Pacific to which the nanie of Melanesia has been
given, that form a curved belt following roughly the outline
of the Australian coast, at a general distance of some fifteen
hundred miles, and turning away from the important outlying
Archipelago of Fiji ; these are the Solomon Islands, the
Santa Cruz group, the Banks’ Islands and New Hebrides,
and New Caledonia with the Loyalty Islands. There is
an undoubted connexion of race, language and customs
among the people who inhabit these groups; a connexion
which further extends itself throughout what is called
Melanesia to New Guinea westwards, and eastwards to Fiji.
The distinction between the Melanesian people of these groups
and the Polynesians eastwards of Fiji is clearly marked and
recognised, for the line which separates Melanesian from
Polynesian falls between Fiji and Tonga. No such line can
be drawm to mark .such a boundary to the west till the
Asiatic continent itself is reached. From the Polynesian
islands of the East Pacific on the one side, and from the
Asiatic islands of the Malay Archipelago on the other,
two currents of influence have poured and are pouring into
Melanesia, the former much more modem and direct, the
latter ancient and broken in its course. Upon these currents
float respectively the kava root and the betel-nut. The use
of the betel is common to India, China, and the Melanesian
islands as far to the east as Tikopia; the Polynesian kava
has established itself in the New Hebrides, and is a novelty
in some of the Banks’ Islands ; it has not been carried across
i D
B2	Introductory.	[ch.
the boundary of the betel-nut by the Polynesian settlers
in the Reef Islands of Santa Cruz. The present work is
not concerned at all with one of the four groups above
mentioned, that of New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands,
nor with the larger southern members of the New Hebrides
group ; its view is confined, except for occasional illustration,
to the Solomon Islands, Ysabel, Florida, Savo, Guadalcanal-,
Malanta, San Cristoval, Ulawa, to the Santa Cruz group, the
Banks’ and Torres Islands, and three of the northern New
Hebrides, Aurora, Pentecost and Lepers’ Islands. Within this
field are contained certain islands inhabited by Polynesian
colonists from the East who still retain their Polynesian
speech. Such are Nupani, Pileni, Nukapu, and other reef
islands of the Swallow group, where the physical character-
istics of the Polynesian people may possibly he traced, hut
certainly are not conspicuous, having been lost by mixture
with neighbouring Melanesians. In Rennell Island and Bellona
Island, southern members of the Solomon group, the people
are physically Polynesian ; a lad from Bellona, who was in
New Zealand with Bishop Patteson, was in name (Te Kiu),
colour, tattoo, and speech very much a Maori. Men from the
Polynesian settlements on Mae and Fate in the New Hebrides
have found the language of Ontong Java like their own.
The discovery of these islands was prolonged through
three centuries, and carried on by Spanish, French and
English voyagers. The Spaniards found the Solomon Islands,
Santa Cruz, the Banks’ Islands, and the northern New
Hebrides; the French added much later to the discoveries in
these groups; the English found, under Captain Cook, the
principal islands of the New Hebrides and New Caledonia,
and have filled in the charts. The Dutch discovered Fiji.
The earliest, and certainly most interesting, discoveries were
those of the Spaniards; of Mendana in his two voyages
of 1567 and 1595, and of Quiros and Torres in 1606 h
1 Dr. Guppy, in his Solomon Islands and their Natives, has discussed these
discoveries at length with special reference to the Journal of Gallego. By the
kindness of Mr. Woodford I have read the narrative of Cotoira. In both theDiscoveries.
3
i-l
Mendana, despatched by the Viceroy of Peru, reached in
1567 the first Melanesian land seen by Europeans, the great
island which he named Santa Ysabel de la Estrella, and from
thence the voyagers under his command discovered further
and named the large islands Malaita, Guadalcanal, San
Cristoval, and the lesser islands, Sesarga, which is Savo,
Florida with its islets, Ulawa, and the small islands near
San Cristoval. To these he gave the name of the Solomon
Islands, to mark his conjecture, or to suggest the belief, that
he had discovered the source of the riches of Solomon. In
his second voyage of 1 595j undertaken for the purpose of
colonizing the Solomon Islands, Mendana discovered Santa
Cruz, and attempted to form a settlement there ; an attempt
abandoned after two months, in consequence of his death and
the sickness of the remnant of his crews. Quiros had been
with Mendana, and was allowed in 1606 to carry out a
project he had been continually urging of recovering and
colonizing the Solomon group. Fortune however made him
the discoverer of the New Hebrides, when he believed himself
to have reached the great Austral Continent, in the island
which still bears the name he gave it of Espiritu Santo.
The first Melanesian islands however that he saw were those
now known as the Banks’ Islands, one of which, Santa Maria,
retains the name he gave it: Torres, after parting from Quiros,
saw and named the Torres Islands. After an interval of more
than a century and a half, the French voyager Bougainville,
in 1768, added Pentecost, Lepers’ Island, and Malikolo to the
discovery of Quiros, naming the group the Great Cyclades,
and found the great islands of Choiseul and Bougainville
beyond those discovered in the first voj'age of Mendana.
Polynesian word Te Ariki, the Chief, in the form Taurique, is given as the
designation of the chiefs in Ysabel, where it is now entirely out of place. This
is the less easy of explanation, as the other native words given appear to be
those now in use. I may add that I have discussed the accounts of Mendana’s
discoveries, as related in Burney’s and Dalrymple’s collections, with natives of
the Solomon and Santa Cruz Islands ; but unfortunately my notes on this
subject have been lost.
B 24
Introductory.	[ch.
In the next year Surville passed through the same group ;
the disastrous voyage of La Perouse ended at Vanikoro in
1785. The southern islands of the group, which have since
preserved the name he gave of the New Hebrides, were
discovered by Cook in his second great voyage in 1774, and
after these New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands. Bligh, in
his wonderful boat voyage after the mutiny of the Bounty,
passed through and named the islands of the Banks’ group.
The names given by the Spaniards to the Solomon and Santa
Cruz groups, and to the islands of Ysabel, Florida, Guadal-
canal', San Cristoval, Santa Anna and Santa Catalina, to
Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides and Santa Maria in the
Banks’ Islands, have maintained themselves; some of the
French names have disappeared; some, Aurora, Pentecost or
Whitsuntide, Star Island, Gulf Island (for Ugi), have taken
an English form. To some islands no new names have been
given, native names, or what were supposed to be such, having
been supplied by the natives, such as Ambrym, Api, Mallicollo ;
in some cases the native name, or what was taken for it, as
Malaita, has prevailed over the name given by the discoverer.
To ascertain the native name, and the proper orthography of
the native name, of an island is a matter of difficulty to
a visitor. Large islands seldom have a name; an enquirer
pointing to the island as a whole, is given the name of the
district or village to which he points, or perhaps that of some
islet between him and the mainland ; or lie may take the
name of a man for that of a place b Of the islands discovered
1 The island of San Cristoval has been called Bauro by Europeans,
not by natives, from the name of a part of it. A village on that island
is marked on the Admiralty chart with the name of its chief. The island
of Florida and its language has got the name of Anutha. and Anudha,
from an islet between Mboli and Ravu. Bishop Patteson, on his visit in
1862, was given by a native boy on board the name, in the form Anudha,
of the islet Anuha, and took it for the name of the whole island. Melanesians
who could not pronounce th called it Anuta; Banks’ Islanders, taking the
first syllable to be the preposition ‘at,’ commonly used with names of places,
call it Nuta, and Nut. The large island of Ysabel may be seen in some maps
marked Mahaga, from a single village in Bugotu, the language of which was
made known by Bishop Patteson.Discoveries.
i-]
by Mendana in liis first voyage, Ysabel, Guadalcanal', and
San Cristoval have no native names, thoug'h names of parts
are often taken to designate the whole ; the second of these,
so far as is known to them, is called Gera by natives of south-
east Malanta and San Cristoval; and the latter has become
known as Bauro, from its most conspicuous part. It is strange
that the large island which has somehow got the name of
Malanta has a native name, at any rate all along the west side,
Mala or Mara. The native name of Florida is Nggela, the
same word as Gera ; and the island is known in Mala Masiki
as ‘ beyond Gela.’ Savo is no doubt the island called Sesarga
by the Spaniards, who beard the name Sabo, and misplaced
it. The native Ulawa, heard by the Spaniards as Uraba,
has lost the Spanish name of La Treguada, and retains
on the charts Snrville’s Contrariete. The native name of
Santa Cruz, the discovery of Mendana’s second voyage, is
Ndeni, from which the Nitendi of the charts has probably
been derived h
The discovery of the Banks’ Islands and New Hebrides by
Quiros was preceded by a visit to Taumako, where he obtained
information concerning some sixty islands known to the native
voyagers. Nearly all of these probably are the small islands
inhabited, like Taumako, by people of the Polynesian race,
1 There can be little doubt that Gallego’s Florida is a part of the Nggela of
the natives, and probably Buena Yista is Yatilau. San Dimas, San German,
Guadalupe, have been shewn by Mr. Woodford to be parts of Florida as they
shew from the sea, not as the island is divided by unseen channels. The native
names of the lesser islands near San Cristoval are, Ugi for Gulf Island, the
Spanish San Juan ; ’Olu Malau, the Three Malau, for Three Sisters, Las Tres
Marias ; Owa-raha, Great Owa, for Santa Ana, and Owa-rii, Little Owa,for Santa
Catalina. It is remarkable how much more accurate Gallego’s Aguare is than
the Yoriki of the charts or the Orika given by Dr. Guppy. Gallego’s Hapa
may represent Owa, though not so well as Oo-ah or Oa. Uraba is really
nearer the native Ulawa than Ulaua, the native tongue, like the Spanish,
readily interchanging 1 and r, w and b. How Mr. Brenchley got Ulakua
cannot be explained, nor why a new form Ulava is introduced. A correct
native name, it may be said, is rarely to be obtained from a trader; the early
sea-going visitors make the form which is to stand for the native name, and
hand it on. The only security is the writing of a native who knows.6	Introductory.	[ch.
who are great voyagers at the present day, and are easily dis-
tinguished by their Polynesian tongue, though where they lie
near larger islands of Melanesian population, the appearance of
Polynesians has been lost1. Many of these islands are easily
identified, and lie away from the New Hebrides2, but Quiros
was led by his information to look for the large country
of which he was in search towards the south, and he thought
he found it in what he named Tierra Austral del Espiritu
Santo. This island, now commonly known as Santo, has the
native name of Marina. This was not the first land of the
New Hebrides seen by Quiros ; after having apparently seen
the light of a volcano in the night, he found himself in the
morning in view of three islands, one the present Aurora of
the New Hebrides, and two belonging to the Banks’ Islands,
the volcanic cone, Merlav, called by him Nuestra Senora de la
1	I have myself witnessed the arrival of eleven canoes from Tikopia among
the Banks’ Islands. The men said they had come to see the islands, and
were hospitably received. One was shot at Ureparapara, and they departed.
Shortly before this a canoe from Tikopia had been driven by the wind to Mota,
and the men in her most kindly treated, and the same thing had happened
before and has happened since. The difference in size, manner, language and
dress between the Tikopians and Banks’ Islanders was conspicuous. The true
name is pretty certainly C’hikopia, since the Mota people learnt Sikopia from
tlieir visitors ; two Fijian islands are Cikobia = Thikombia.
2	Chicayana is Sikaiana, Stewart Island; Guaytopo is Waitupu, Tracy Island,
of the Ellice group ; Taukalo is Tokelau ; Nupani and Pileni are Reef Islands of
Santa Cruz ; Manicolo no doubt stands for Vanikoro. Bishop Patteson in 1866
found that the Reef Islanders of Santa Cruz visited Taumako and Tikopia. It
is excusable at sight to take the Pouro of Quiros for Bauro in San Cristoval,
but in my opinion the attempted identification must completely fail. In
the first place, Pouro and Bauro are far from being the same in sound when the
confusion of English spelling is got rid of ; Quiros would never write ou for an.
Secondly, Bauro is not and never was the native name of San Cristoval; it is
a name picked up by Europeans, I believe by Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand,
and adopted for European convenience. Gallego calls, and properly, a part
only of the island Paubro. Thirdly, arrows with points in form of a knife
(a fair description of some Lepers’ Island arrows) are wholly out of place in
the Solomon Islands. Fourthly, the certain identifications of the islands
named do not lead in that direction. In the same way, when it is understood
that the name of the island in the Malay Archipelago is Buru, in Dutch
spelling Boeroe, there can remain very little ground for identifying it with
either Bauro or Bulotu, in French spelling Bourotou.Discoveries.
7
>■]
Luz, and Santa Maria. After having1 visited the latter,
he made his way to a larger island seen to the southward,
and remained a month in the great bay of SS. Philip and James
in Espiritu Santo. Merlav was renamed Pic de 1’ Etoile
by Bougainville, and is now Star Island. The eight islands of
the Banks’ group are: (i) Star Island, Merlav; (2) Sainte Claire,
Merig ; (3) Santa Maria, Gaua ; (4) Sugarloaf Island, Mota ;
(5) Great Banks’ Island, Yanua Lava ; (6) Saddle Island ; (7)
Bligh Island, Ureparapara; and (8) Rowa1. One of these, named
Saddle Island by Bligh, has no native name as a whole; another,
the Reef Island of Rowa, has no geographical name. The
Torres group consists of four islands, Hiw, Tegua, Lo, and Tog,
and is now known as Vava ; there is no native name to
the group. The native names of the three islands which
with Espiritu Santo make up the northern New Hebrides are,
Maewo, Aurora Island ; Araga, Pentecost Island ; and Omba,
Lepers’ Island. The two latter names present a difficulty, and
1 Quiros named seven islands before he reached Espiritu Santo: San
Raymundo, Los Portales de Belen, La Yergel, Las Lagrimas de San Pedro,
El Pilar de Zaragoza, Santa Maria, and Nuestra Senora de la Luz. The two
latter alone are known. Bligh named Ureparapara after himself, Saddle Island
and Sugarloaf Island (probably the Pillar of Quiros) after natural features, and
Great Banks’ Island, with the whole group, after Sir Joseph Banks. Besides the
geographical names, these islands have mostly three sets of names. An island
has its name in the local form and in the Mota form, which has come into use
through the employment of the Mota tongue as a common language in the
Melanesian Mission. Thus Vanua Lava, Gaua, Ureparapara, Meralava,
are the Mota forms of Vono Lav, Gog, Norbarbar, Merlav. Another set
of names was used by natives when sailing between the islands, with a
view of concealing their course from unseen enemies ; Mota was TJre-kor,
the place full of dried bread-fruit; Ureparapara, full of slopes, was Ure-us, full
of bows, Meralava, TJre-kere, full of clubs, the best bows and clubs being
got there ; others were named after the food and other natural productions
thought to characterise them. Misspelt and then misread, the rock Yat Ganai
has become in maps the island Vatu Rhandi; by a misreading of Gaua, Santa
Maria, which is to its native inhabitants Gog, got with traders the name of Ganna.
The Torres group has got the name of Yava, with the preposition 1 at’ Avava,
Ababa, from a part of one of the islands which Ureparapara people used
to visit. Traders have fixed on Tog the name of Pukapuka, originally
unknown among the natives. The Mota name for Lepers’ Island, Opa, for
Omba, has become well known.8	Introductory.	[ch.
bring in a point of much interest. In the native name of
Pentecost a is really the preposition ‘ at ’ • Ornba with the same
preposition appears in charts as Aoba ; it would be reasonable
therefore to write Raga as well as Omba, but custom in these
matters must be allowed to prevail. The interest of the
point lies in the connexion shewn by the common use of
this preposition in place-names between Melanesia, the Malay
Archipelago and Madagascar. Ethnological and historical
questions are inseparable from the consideration of place-
names ; for example, the questions whether the Bauro of
the Solomon Islands is the same with the Bouro, properly
Burn, near the Moluccas, or whether Futuna of the New
Hebrides is named after Futuna, Horne’s Island. About one
thing however there ought to be no disagreement; however
difficult it may be to ascertain a native name and its ortho-
graphy, European names should be written in the language
to which they belong; Sim Cristoval, or Cristobal, not
Christoval; Espiritu Santo, not Spirito Santo or St. Esprit;
and where French names are retained, Contrariete Island and
Caj)e Zele'e.
Between the time of the discovery of the Solomon Islands
by Mendana and the time in which the visits of whalers,
traders and missionaries have become frequent, within the
last thirty or forty years, very little if anything at all was
done by Europeans to influence the character of native life.
It is very interesting therefore to enquire in what particulars
the Spaniards’ account of what they discovered differs from
what would be recorded by recent visitors. The place-names
mentioned, with less error than is common now, are those still
in use, Malaita for Mala, Uraba for Ulawa, Paubro for Bauro,
Aguare for Owarii. The names of persons mentioned are such
as are now in use; one of the few words not names to
be found in Gallego’s narrative, benau, jpanale, jjanay, is clearly
puna, a kind of yam with prickles on the vines. In three points
it may be observed that Gallego reports what would not
have been lately seen. The natives are represented as at-
tacking the Spaniards with bows and arrows everywhere,Discoveries.
9
i-]
except at San Cristoval, where darts are mentioned ; in recent
times a voyager would not have found bows and arrows
the usual weapon, but spears, except at Malanta. Gallego
reports open cannibalism at Ysabel and Florida, whereas
no modern visitor would have seen it except at San Cristoval.
Nakedness is said by Gallego to have been complete, a point
in which Figueroa differs from him, and complete nakedness
would not have been found of late years anywhere but in
Malanta. The probable conclusion is that, making allowance
for lapses of memory on one side and exaggeration of fact on
the other, the people, language, customs and condition of the
people in the Solomon Islands have not changed since
Mendana’s discovery of 1567 h
The account of the visit of Mendana to Santa Cruz in
1595 and of the Spanish attempt to form a settlement is
ample and detailed ; and it was remarked by Bishop Patteson,
who was probably the first European after Mendana’s party to
go about the native villages, that what he observed corre-
sponded closely with the Spanish record. It is only within the
last ten years that, by the courage and enterprise of the present
Missionary Bishop John Selwyn, the island of Santa Cruz has
again become open to friendly, and unhappily also to mis-
chievous, approach. The present writer has gone through
the account of Mendana’s visit with natives of Santa Cruz,
whose comments were certainly interesting. One point may
be mentioned; the Spaniards, failing to get the people of the
main island to learn their language, sent to kidnap, after
the fashion which from the beginning seems to have been
natural to European visitors, some boys from the neighbouring
Reef Islands, whom they had observed to be more intelligent
1 Mr. Woodford, in Further Explorations in the Solomon Islands, has
brought forward information from the Journal of Catoira, chief purser of
Mendana’s fleet. From this it appears that the use of the betel-nut was
already established. Another native word, na mbolo, a pig, also occurs.
Much may be learnt as to the present condition of the Solomon Islanders
from Mr. Woodford’s Naturalist among the Headhunters, as well as from
Dr. Guppy’s book ; but there is no picture of native life so good as that given
in ‘ Percy Pomo.’io	Introductory.	[ch.
than those of Santa Cruz. When this was related to a
mixed group of Santa Cruz and Reef Island boys at Norfolk
Island, it was at once declared that the Spaniards were quite
right, that the Santa Cruz people now think the Reef Island boys
sharper than their own ; because it is the custom of their
fathers to take them with them on their voyages, which
Santa Cruz men do not do. The very short stay of the
Spaniards, soon assuming hostile relations, cannot be thought
to have affected native life at all; the looms with which
they weave their mats, their fowls, common till lately to other
islands with them, and many other things in which a
difference has been observed, are mentioned in the Spanish
narrative. There is nothing in the account of the discoveries
of Quiros in the Banks’ Islands and New Hebrides to shew
any difference between the condition of the native people
then and in the later times, when they have become well
known to Europeans; but it may be observed that the
Spaniards began to kidnap, doubtless with good intentions,
and to recognise the ‘ devil ’ of the natives.
In the interval between the discoveries of Mendana and
Quiros and the visits of whalers and missionaries in the
present century, there is every reason to believe that all
memory and tradition of white men had died away in the
Solomon Islands and Santa Cruz 1; Europeans appeared again
as perfect strangers. We are able therefore to conjecture
how the first explorers appeared to the natives, when we know
how we have ourselves appeared. To the old voyagers, as
1 Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand began his missionary voyages in 1849,
and visited the Solomon Islands in 1850 ; he landed on sixty islands in 1857,
in which year the Banks’ Islands became well known to him. In 1861 Bishop
Patteson, in H. M. S. Cordelia, became acquainted with Florida and Ysabel,
the yearly visits of the Melanesian Mission having before stopped short at
Guadalcanar. From that year forward the work of the Mission has been
regularly carried on within the limits of Ysabel to the west, and Mae,
later Pentecost, to the south. When the present writer made his first voyage
in the Mission vessel, the Southern Cross, in 1863, Bishop Patteson was
generally conversant with the people and the languages of the islands from
New Zealand to Ysabel.Discoveries.
!•]
I I
to later discoverers, it was a matter of course that hitherto
unknown countries should he found, and that they should be
inhabited by men unlike themselves; but to the natives
it was a strange thing that there should be any men unlike
themselves, or any unknown land for them to come from.
There are still natives in these islands who remember when a
white man was first seen, and what he was taken to be. In
the Banks’ Islands, for example, the natives believed the world
to consist of their own group, with the Torres Islands, the three
or four northern New Hebrides, and perhaps Tikopia, round
which the ocean spread till it was shut in by the foundations
of the sky. The first vessels they remember to have seen
were whalers, which they did not believe to come from any
country in the world ; they were indeed quite sure that they
did not, but must have been made out at sea, because they
knew that no men in the world had such vessels. In the
same way thejr were sure that the voyagers were not men ; if
they were they would be black. What were they then?
They were ghosts, and being ghosts, of necessity those of men
who had lived in the world. When Mr. Patteson first landed
at Mota, the Mission party having’ been seen in the previous
year at Vanua Lava, there was a division of opinion among
the natives; some said that the brothers of Qat had returned,
certain supernatural beings of whom stories are told; others
maintained that they were ghosts. Mr. Patteson retired from
the heat and crowd into an empty house, the owner of which
had lately died; this settled the question, he was the ghost
of the late householder, and knew his home. A very short
acquaintance with white visitors shews that they are not
ghosts, but certainly does not shew that they are men;
the conjecture then is that they are beings of another order,
spirits or demons, powerful no doubt, but mischievous. A
ghost would be received in a peaceful and respectful manner,
as European visitors have always in the first instance been
received ; a being not a living man or ghost has wonderful
things with him to see and to procure, but he probably brings
disease and disaster. To the question why the Santa Cruz12	Introductory.	[ch.
people shot at Bishop Patteson’s party in 1864, when, as
far as can be known, they had not as yet any injuries from
white men to avenge, the natives have replied that their
elder men said that these strange beings would bring nothing
but harm, and that it was well to drive them away; and as
to shooting at them, they were not men, and the arrows could
not do them much harm. It is sad to think how generally
the elder men have, from their own point of view at least,
been right; iron, tobacco, calico, a wider knowledge of the
world, have not compensated native people for new diseases
and the weakening of social bonds h White visitors have not
meant to do the natives wrong, but they have in fact harmed
them, and have not earned moral respect at any rate generally
from them. Europeans have from the beginning of inter-
course with Melanesian natives kidnapped them, and have
persuaded themselves that they were doing them a service
by bringing them into what is called contact with civilization ;
the natives have from the first resented the kidnapping of their
sons, and their sons, however much they may have washed to
go away and have rejoiced in what they have learnt and
acquired, w ill hardly be said by any impartial observer to have
done any good when they have returned ; although indeed to
some people the power of speaking a little ‘ pigeon English,’ for
their convenience, seems to be a g'reat improvement to a native.
To a voyager among these Melanesian islands who has
no special geological learning the generally volcanic character
1 I believe there is no doubt that dysentery was unknown in the islands
till natives returned from residence with Europeans. When the Nukapu
men, whose kidnapping was	the immediate cause	of	the death of	Bishop
Patteson, escaped from Fiji	and made their way	to	their native	island,
dysentery, before unknown, broke out there. The absence of a native name
for this and other diseases, is to some extent at least a proof of recent in-
troduction. Within my own	recollection syphilis,	or	the venereal	disease
which was taken for it, was	unknown in the islands	visited by the Mela-
nesian Mission, except at San Cristoval, where alone intercourse with whalers
and traders had been considerable. It has lately become widely known,
and it is certain that it has been brought back by returned ‘ labourers,’ male
and female.i.]*	Geology.	13
of them cannot fail to be apparent. The lofty land of Guadal-
canal rising to a height of 8000 feet, and the high mountains
of Espiritu Santo and New Caledonia, may be thought by
him to have some other origin ; but he cannot miss the still
active volcanos, or fail to observe that many islands have the
shape of those that are active in a more or less perfect or
ruinous condition. The vast cone of Lopevi in the New
Hebrides rises to an apparent point at the height of 5000 feet,
and has been seen to cast out smoke and ashes. Tinakula, as
it is called, near Santa Cruz, the native name of which is
Tamami, is a well-formed cone 3000 feet high. When Men-
dana was attempting his settlement in 1595, the point of the
cone was blown away; the volcano is now very active, throwing
out glowing masses of lava, which roll down into the sea.
The enormous crater of Ambrym, at the height of 2500 feet,
is the centre of vast rugged fields of lava, hitherto unapproach-
able ; round this main mass of the volcano there rise lateral
cones no longer active, forest-covered to their peaks, and
affording perhaps the most beautiful of Melanesian landscapes.
When the Solomon Islands were discovered Savo was active.
Some years ago an eruption was expected by the natives,
because the old people remembered or had been told of
considerable activity some fifty years before ; rumblings were
then heard and smoke was seen at Florida : the steaming
pool and hot stream flowing from it are often visited. In the
Banks’ Islands, Vanua Lava is always steaming from its
sulphur springs. Great lateral cones on the north and east of
this island are now extinct, but the streams which rise in the
central mass run warm and stinking to the sea, and powder
the rocks with sulphur. In Santa Maria above Lakona there
are steaming vents on the ridge of the ancient crater now
filled by a lake, and on the hill Garat, w'hich has been thrown
up within it, there is a group of hot pools, sulphurous
jets, and basins of boiling mud within the encircling ridge, from
which hot streams pour down into the lake b Bligh Island,
1 Any volcanic vent, from an active crater to a dead solfatara, is in the
Banks1 Islands a vuro. Three of those near Lakona have names, one, a deep14	Introductory.	£ch.
Ureparapara, is a remarkable example of the type of Amsterdam
or St. Paul’s Island in the Indian Ocean; the sea enters the
ancient crater, on the ridge of which, rising to nearly 2000 feet,
is a steaming vent. Star Island, Meralava, is a massive cone
rising so steeply to a height of 3000 feet, that it surprises
strangers that it should be inhabited. From below the cone
appears to terminate in a cup with a broken lip, but Bishop
Selwyn and Mr. Palmer, who reached the top in 1881, found
a more recent crater, which no doubt was active when Quiros
discovered the island : there is now no recollection of activity h
In the New Hebrides, volcanic action has not yet exhausted
itself on Lepers’ Island ; it is probable that besides the very
conspicuous volcanos of Ambrym, Lopevi, and Yazur on
Tanna, there are many solfataras and fumaroles as yet un-
noticed in this group.
All these volcanic islands, whether still in active operation,
or still fuming with latent fires, or long ago extinct, have
dead and living coral round their base. The greater number
of the islands lie in a ruined mass, in contrast to the cones of
Lopevi and Tinakula ; in some the volcanic form is hidden or
pool sluggishly bubbling and steaming, is the Old Woman ; another briskly
active is the Stranger’s Wonder; another, the New Vuro, though evidently
not very recent, is very active and noisy. In the largest pool, some twenty feet
across, two jets of steam raise the water to the height of a couple of feet, and
after rain very much higher. When I was there in 1875 a new vent had been
lately opened by an earthquake.
1 Some years ago a native lad from Mota told me that he with a companion
had mounted to this crater. They found at the top a bare stretch of stones,
and within the crater a lake of black water, covered with a thick black cloud;
a heavy darkness filled the place, a huge bird soared round their heads, awe
and horror fell upon them, and they turned and fled. It is easy to talk
lightly about native superstitions. Mr. Palmer thus describes the crater.
‘ We could see nothing at first, as a cloud was over, but presently it lifted, and
we saw a large deep crater with splendid precipitous sides, in some places
fully three hundred feet high. There is a small pool of water at the bottom,
and rather on one side a second perfectly round crater, which we also deter-
mined to look into. We descended through trees and mosses; I was much
interested in finding the tutu of New Zealand (coriaria sarmentosa), which I
have never seen anywhere else in these islands ; the second crater goes down
to a point, where the trees and ferns are of better growth.’'•]
Volcanos
15
confused, in others lateral cones and craters plainly shew
themselves; a dense forest growth generally covers all from
base to summit. All alike have coral forming- a certain pro-
portion of their mass, the rock of coral formation varying
with its age. Elevated terraces of coral appear in Futuna and
the Loyalty Islands. The figure of Mota, in the Banks’
Islands, shews the primary cone with a shoulder of later16	Introductory.	[ch.
discharges standing upon a broad coral base uplifted some 200
feet above the sea. On this raised surface lie blocks of volcanic
stone, while the ravines cut deep through it by the torrents
from above exjDOse to view the madrepore and other corals of
which it is composed; on the beach water-worn fragments of
both coral and volcanic rock lie among the living coral.
In the Torres Islands terraces formed by successive upheavals
are conspicuous ; nothing is seen but coral; in one of the
islands, at least, the natives have to dig for volcanic stone
that will bear heat for their ovens. In the Banks’ Islands it
may be said that the land is being elevated ; a patch between
Mota and Motalava has become much more shallow in the
last few years.
Florida in the Solomon group is divided into three parts by
two channels called utuha, and calls to mind the mainland of
the Aru Islands, as described in Mr. Wallace’s Malay Archi-
pelago. Though the northernmost channel is pretty wide, the
island in its native name, Nggela, and in native conception, is
one, and neither of the three parts has a name of its own. A
similar channel divides Mala masiki from Mala paina, little
from great Malanta. In Florida, over the wider channel
which is called from this utuha 1a na vuta the Moon Channel,
there is a cliff white as chalk. In the Banks’ Islands small
barren patches, rea, of coarse grass here and there appear;
in Florida large barren spaces of this kind are conspicuous, as
they are on the opposite slopes of Guadalcanal-, and change
the aspect of the landscape to the eyes of one who comes from
the forest-covered islands to the East1.
1 The islands may be roughly classified according to the use of stone or shell
implements in them. In the Banks’ Islands, Torres Islands, and Santa Cruz,
they had only shell adzes, and used obsidian flakes for cutting and scraping.
In the Solomon Islands, except in Rennell and Bellona, and the New Hebrides,
the implements were of stone, and flakes of chert were used ; but in the latter
group on Lepers’ Island, where the volcanic force is not yet exhausted, shell
was the ancient use. Stone adzes in my possession from the Solomon Islands
are of Andesite, a basaltic lava, from Florida compact andesite, from Ulawa
altered andesite ; from the New Hebrides, one from Ambrym is Gabbro,
one from Pentecost is Bastite serpentine.i.]	Reef Islands. Lakes. Zoology.	17
Whether there are in this part of Melanesia any atolls
properly so called may he a question. There are lagoon
islands of two kinds. The Reef Islands of the Santa Cruz
group show flat patches of sand and coral resting on the reefs;
such a one is Nukapu, where the lagoon is two miles across.
The Matema group, part of the same Swallow group, consists
of several sand islets resting on the edge of a very large
and irregular reef; two of the islets, which are only separated
at high tide, are very characteristically inhabited, Nufilole by
a score or two of Melanesians, and Fenua loa, as the name
imports, by Polynesian colonists from the East. On the other
hand, Rowa in the Banks’ group consists of five tiny islets on
the bight of an irregular reef five miles long, the principal
islet being formed upon a jagged point of volcanic rock,
to all appearance a frag-ment of the edge of a sunken crater.
The Tats in the middle of Santa Maria in the Banks’ Islands
is the only lake of considerable size known in Melanesia.
It is about five miles long, occupying the hollow of the
ancient crater, into which the steaming hill Garat has been
intruded; the waters pour out in a magnificent waterfall.
There is a much smaller lake in Vanua Lava which feeds
two fine cascades, and another on Lepers’ Island with a
volcanic vent upon its edge. Bishop Selwyn in 1888 found
the lake at Tikopia covered with large water-lilies; the Tas
of Santa Maria will surely reward its first scientific visitor.
A few words may be ventured on the natural history of this
part of Melanesia. The cuscus common in the Solomon Islands
does not reach to Santa Cruz; it is believed to exist in
Espiritu Santo, where Quiros reported that there were goats.
The white cockatoo, abundant in the Solomon Islands generally,
does not pass the two straits that separate respectively Guadal-
canar and San Cristoval, Malanta and Ulawa; but while
Ulawa does not strike the unlearned visitor as different in its
zoology from Malanta, the birds of San Cristoval seem few and
strange. Frogs stop short of Santa Cruz, abundant as they
are in the Solomons. A remarkable megapod is found in all
the groups, if not of more than one species at any rate with
C18	Introductory.	[ch.
different habits. At Savo, where without any attempt at
domestication they have become private property, they lay in a
carefully divided and appropriated patch of sand, and come out of
the bush, as the natives say, twice a day to lay and look after
their eggs. In the Banks’ Islands and the New Hebrides
they lay their eggs in the hollow of a decayed tree or in a
heap of rubbish they have scratched together. In the Banks’
Islands these birds are called malau, as they are maleo in
Celebes1. The native breed of fowls still abounds in Santa
Cruz ; the imported fowls seem to have destroyed and replaced
them in all the more commonly visited places, though they
were common thirty years ago2. Crocodiles are abundant in
the Solomon Islands and Santa Cruz ; they are sometimes seen
in the Banks’ Islands, and one was lately killed in the Torres
Islands; they are known and named in the Northern New
Hebrides. The name throughout is the same, vua or via, the
Malay buaya, Malagasy vocuj. The natives of Ysabel maintain
that they have four eyes, two for clear water, and two for
mud. Snakes are not everywhere abundant; at Mota in the
Banks’ Islands there are no land snakes, and the natives
maintain that if imported they will not live; in Vanua Lava
and Saddle Island of the same group, those that live among
the root-stems of the huge banyan-trees are said to attain an
enormous size. The eels in the Tas of Santa Maria are some-
times more than thirty inches in girth. It is tantalizing to
those who suffer so much from mosquitos in the islands now to
know that Mendana, who was two months at Santa Cruz,
1	Mr. Wallace remarks of tlie maleo of Celebes, that the difference between
the sexes is so slight that it is not always possible to distinguish it without
dissection. At Savo it is asserted that there is no distinction of sex, all are
hens ; circi mua yulcua na tanotanodrka, they know no sexual impropriety.
2	The rapidity with which imported fowls have replaced the indigenous
breed is remarkable. I have no recollection myself of having seen native
fowls, out of Santa Cruz, except in Lepers’ Island and Florida. Mr. Woodford
remarks, as a proof how little native tradition can be depended on, that
natives assured him that there were no fowls in the Solomons until white men
came. They meant, no doubt, fowls of the kind before them. I am not aware
that any new name has come in anywhere in the Solomon Islands, as JcoTcoh has
in the Banks’ Islands, for the new fowls.i.]	Zoology.	x 9
and Quiros, who lay a month in the great hay of Espiritu
Santo, both declare that in their time there were no
mosquitos, but. it is probably the small house fly that is
meant. The variety of the mosquitos of the present time is
interesting with all the suffering they bring; in Mota there
is but one kind, which bites only in the daylight; in Vanua
Lava, in the rainy season, they drive the natives to bury them-
selves in the sea-sand for sleep. The same name for the
mosquito prevails from the Asiatic continent to Fiji; and the
odious blow-fly carries the same name and habits through all
the islands. Dr. Guppy commends the habits of the Birgus
latro to the attention of residents in the Pacific Ocean. The
account of it in Hazlewood’s Fiji Dictionary describes how
the ugavule climbs cocoanut-trees, pierces and drinks the young
nuts, husks and breaks the old nuts and eats the meat; how it
is taken by tying grass round the tree it has ascended, so that
when descending backwards it reaches as it believes the
ground, and loosing its hold on the tree it falls and is stunned ;
how it throws earth and stones into the face of its pursuers.
The same crab or lobster is called ngair in the Banks’ Islands,
•where the natives assert that when it seizes anything, such as
a man’s hand, with the left and smaller claw, it bolds till
sundown; on which account that claw has the name of
sundown, loaroro. They say also that when a ngair drops a
cocoanut from the tree upon a stone to break it, he will only
eat it if it is broken smooth ; if the fracture is jagged he will
not touch it. The Wango people of San Cristoval go beyond
pjrobable fact when they relate that on moonlight nights they
paddle over to the little island Biu, and quietly creeping up the
beach find these crabs occupied in a dance, two large and old
ones in the centre, beating time with one claw upon the other,
and the rest circling round and waving their claws as the
daDC-ing natives wave their clubs; so surprised they are taken
in great numbers1.
1 The natives do not believe in the existence of anthropoid apes. They
believe in the existence of wild men, and Europeans for many years past have
interpreted this belief to imply the existence of apes. See Chapter xviii.CI-X A P T E R II.
SOCIAL REGULATIONS. DIVISIONS OF THE PEOPLE.
KINSHIP AND MARRIAGE CONNEXION.
There will be no attempt made here to deal with the
Ethnology of Melanesia. The origin of the Melanesian
people, in their various seats and in their various divisions,
may be taken to be unknown ; as they themselves apparently
have no traditions and no opinions about the matter, and in
the stories which pass among them represent themselves to
have been created where they are. The variety of their
languages, and to a much less extent of their arts and
customs, shews that they have not come in one body into
the islands they now inhabit; an examination of their lan-
guages discovers a very considerable underlying sameness;
and the present book may be taken perhaps as an evidence
of a large general resemblance in the religious beliefs and
practices, the customs and ways of life, which prevail in the
islands which are here embraced in a common view. As
knowledge extends and detailed information is brought in
from all sides, a connexion will no doubt be traced with
regions beyond Melanesia; the loom, for example, peculiar
to Santa Cruz alone among the islands here treated of, may
connect the people of that group with those of the Caroline
Islands; many things in common between Fiji and Mada-
gascar besides language may bring those countries and much
that lies between them into whatever ethnographic province
the latter is held to belong to ; but to endeavour to trace
such connexion is beyond the present purpose, which is
confined to the exhibition of the Melanesian people as theyExogamous Divisions.	2 1
now appear. There are not wanting some myths of origin,
over and above the stories of creation told of Koevasi, Qat, or
Tagar. It is said at Saa for example, in Mara Masiki, that
men sprung spontaneously from a sugar-cane of a particular
sort, tohu nunu : two knots began to shoot, and the cane below
each shoot burst asunder ; from one came out a man, and from
the other a woman, the parents of mankind. It is of more
consecptence to observe the meaning of the words by which
the people of the various islands describe themselves as men.
It is said sometimes that people discovered in isolation from
others call themselves merely ‘ men,’ without a name for their
race or nation, as if they thought themselves the only men in
the world. In Melanesia, when natives were first asked who
they were, they answered 1 men,’ meaning that they were not
demons or ghosts, but living men ; and they did so because
they did not believe their visitors to be men, but ghosts them-
selves, omdemons, or spirits belonging to the sea.
---Tn the native view of mankind, almost everywhere in the
islands which are here under consideration, nothing seems
more fundamental than the division of the people into two or
more classes, which are exogamous, and in which descent is
Counted through the mother. This seems to stand foremost
fas the native looks out upon his fellow men ; the knowledge
of it forms probably the first social conception which shapes
itself in the mind of the young Melanesian of either sex, and
it is not too much to say that this division is the foundation
on which the fabric of native society is built up. There are
no Tribes among the natives; if the word tribe is to be ap-
plied as it is to the Maori people of New Zealand, or as it is
used in Fiji. No portion of territory, however small, can be
said to belong to any one of these divisions; no single family
of natives can fail to consist of members of more than one
division; both divisions where there are two, and all the
divisions where there are more than two, are intermixed in
habitation and in property; whatever political organization
can be found can never be described as that of a tribe grouped
round its hereditary or elective chief. It is probably true
t22	Social Regulations.	[ch.
that in every account of Melanesian affairs given to the world
tribes are spoken of; hut a belief that every savage people is
made up of tribes is part of the mental equipment of a civilized
visitor; when one reads of the 1 coast tribes ’ or the ‘ hush
tribes/ nothing more is meant than the people who inhabit
the coast or the inland part of some island.
There is, however, one very remarkable exception to this
general rule of division in the Solomon Islands ; it is not
to be found in Ulawa, Ugi, and parts of San Cristoval,
Malanta, and Guadalcanal-, a district in which the languages
also form a group by themselves, and in which a difference in
the decorative art of the people, and in the appearance of the
people themselves, thoroughly Melanesian as they are, can
hardly escape notice. In this region, the boundaries of which
are at present unknown, there is no division ofj!ie_people'into
kindreds as elsewhere, and descent"follows the father. This is
so strange that to myself it seemed for a time incredible, and
nothing but the repeated declarations of a native who is well
acquainted with the division which prevails in other groups
of islands, was sufficient to fix it with me as an ascertained
fact. The particular or local causes which have brought about
this exceptional state of things are unknown ; the fact of the
exception is a valuable one to note h
Speaking generally, it may be said that to a Melanesian
man all women, of his own generation at least, are either
sisters or wives, to-the Melanesian~wranan all men are either
brothers or husbands. An excellent illustration of this is
given in the story of Taso from Aurora in the New Hebrides,
in which Qatu discovers and brings to his wife twin hoys,
children of his dead sister: his wife asks, ‘ Are these my
children or my husbands ? ’ and Qatu answers, ‘ Your husbands
to be sure, they are my sister’s children.’ In that island
there are two divisions of the people ; Qatu and his wife could
not be of the same, Qatu and his sister and her children must
be of the same ; the boys therefore were possible husbands of
1 ‘ Descent is still uterine in some parts of Fiji; most of the tribes,
however, have advanced to agnatic descent.’—Rev. L. Fison.ii.]	Restriction of Intercourse.	23
Qatu’s wife, but had they belonged to the other division their
age would have made her count them her children rather than
her brothers. It must not be understood that a Melanesian
regards all women who are not of his own division as in fact
his wives, or conceives himself to have rights which he may
exercise in regard to those women of them who are unmarried ;
but the women who may be his wives by marriage, and those
who cannot possibly be so, stand in a widely different relation
to him ; and it may be added that all women who may become
wives in marriage and are not yet appropriated, are to a certain
extent looked upon by those who maybe their husbands as open
to a more or less legitimate intercourse. In fact appropriation
of particular women to their own husbands, though established
by every sanction of native custom, has by no means so strong
a hold in native society, nor in all probability anything like
so deep a foundation in the history of the native people, as
the severance of either sex by divisions which most strictly
limit the intercourse of men and women to those of the section
or sections to which they do not themselves belong. Two
proofs or exemplifications of this are conspicuous. (1) There is
probably no place in which the common opinion of Melanesians
approves the intercourse of unmarried youths and girls as a
thing good in itself, though it allows it as a thing to be
expected and to be excused; but intercourse within the limit
which restrains from marriage, where two members of the
same division are concerned, is a crime, is incest. In Florida
in old times the man would have been killed, and the woman
made a harlot; now that the severity of ancient manners is
relaxed, money and pigs can condone the offence, but much
more than is exacted if a man is found sinning with one who
might possibly have become his wife. In the Banks’ Islands,
where the divisions of the jreople are two, if it became known
that two members of one of them had been guilty of this dis-
graceful crime, as they considered it, the people of the other
division would come and destroy the gardens of those who
belonged to that in which the offence had been committed,
and these would make no resistance nor complaint. It was24	Social Regulations■	[ch.
the same in Lepers’ Island ; where the offending man had also
to make large payment to the near relatives of the woman
with whom he had offended, so as to appease their anger, and
‘ fence against ’ the fault. Cases of incest of this kind were
always rare in all the islands, so strong was the feeling against
intercourse within the kin. (2) The feeling on the other hand
that the intercourse of the sexes was natural where the man
and woman belonged to different divisions, was shewn by that
feature of native hospitality which provided a guest with a
temporary wife. That this is done now or has lately been
done is readily denied in the Solomon and Banks’ Islands, but
is not denied in the Northern New Hebrides; there can be
little doubt that it was common everywhere. But the woman
supplied to the guest was of necessity one who might have
been his wife ; the companionship) of one of his own kin never
could be allowed.
It will be convenient in the more particular treatment of
this subject, to take examples first from the Banks’ Islands and
Northern New Hebrides, where the peopffe are divided into two
kins, and then from the Solomon Islands, where the divisions
are more than two. The same two divisions run through the
Banks’ Islands, with the Torres Islands and the Northern New
Hebrides. A Banks’ islander wherever he goes in his own
group knows his own kin, and if he passes to Aurora in the New
Hebrides he finds the same. The Aurora men know well
who are their kin in Pentecost and Lepjers’ Island ; the Lepers’
islanders know theirs in Espiritu Santo. Strange, therefore,
as the language is to a Mota man in Pentecost, or to a Lepers’
islander in Motalava, each is at home in a way which would be
impossible to him in the Solomon Islands1. In neither the
Banks’ Islands nor the New Hebrides is there a name to dis-
tinguish the division or kindred ; nor is there any badge or
emblem belonging to either; in their small communities
every neighbour is well known. Each of the divisions is in
1 A Lepers’ Island youth staying at Mota was delivered from some little
difficulty with the remark, 0 in nun we via gai, gate tanun ta Qaaro, He is
a man of the right sort, not a Solomon islander.25
n.] Banks' Islands. Divisions. Adoption.
Mota called a veve, in Motlav rev, a word which in itself
signifies division. Those who are of one veve are said to be
tavalaima to the others, that is ‘of the other side of the house.’
A woman who marries does not come over to her husband’s
side of the house ; she is said to he ape maieima, ‘at. the door,’
the doors being at the ends of the native houses ; nor does the
husband go over to the wife’s side ; the children belong- to the
mother’s side. All of the same ‘ side of the house ’ are sogoi to
one another. Hence a man’s children are not his sogoi, his
kindred ; his nearest relations are his sister’s children. There
is no account seriously given of the origin of the two divisions
in the Banks’ Islands. Within the two veve there are certain
families among the Banks’ Island people, the members of
which have a certain family pride, and endeavour to keep up
by intermarriage the family connexion. The best known of
these is the Lo Sepere family, from the place of that name in
Vanua Lava, where Qat is believed to have lived1. Adoption
is common, and has no particular significance. Childless
parents naturally adopt a child of kin to the wife, so that the
adopted child occupies the position of one born in the house ;
but if, as sometimes happens, an orphan child from the
husband’s kin is adopted out of pity, it is brought up as of kin
to the wife, and care is taken to conceal the fact of adoption.
When the child grows up and by some chance finds out that
he has been brought up on the wrong ‘ side of the house/ he
will leave his foster parents, and go and live with his own
sogoi. Much grief and bitterness is caused by such a dis-
covery.
In Aurora, Maewo, the nearest of the New Hebrides to the
Banks’ Islands, with one of which, Merlav, there is a good
deal of communication, the members of the two divisions
1 The Lo Sepere family of Vanua Lava is the same with the Tupueviga of
Gaua and the Anamele of Mota. On the other side of the house the Tapulia
of Gaua and Merlav are counted the same with three groups at Mota, viz. Alo
Gapmaras of Takelvarea, the Wotawota of Maligo, and the Liwotuqe of Gatava.
These family groups lie within the veve, but do not take in all the veve; neither
side of the house is exhaustively divided into family groups.26
Social Regulations.	[ch.
speak of one another as ‘ of the other side,’ ta tavuluna ; and
they have a story that the first woman, a cowry shell that
turned into a woman, called the men to her and divided them
into her husbands and her brothers, fathers and maternal
uncles, according to the present arrangements. The presence
of families within the kin in this island is very remarkable.
There are several in the northern part of the island, mostly
named from the places where they are formed. There is one,
however, named from the octopus, wirita, belonging originally
to Bugita, a place upon the shore. The connexion between
this family and the octopus is obscure; they have no notion
of descent from the wirita, and eat it as freely as other natives ;
but if a man of another family desired to get wirita for food,
he would take with him one of the wirita family to stand on
the beach at Bugita, and cry out, ‘ So-and-so wants wirita ’;
then plenty would be taken. It seems rather as though the
residence of this family where wirita are abundant, and where
the beach would naturally be their preserve for fishing, had
given rise to a belief in a connexion and to a name. Another
family named ‘ At the Wotaga,’ from their home near a
certain fruit tree, would not bring up a light-coloured child ;
if such a one were among them they thought that they would
die1,
In Araga., Pentecost Island, though irregular intercourse
between members of the same kin is punished by the de-
struction of the gardens of the offending side by the members
of the other, yet marriages within the kin are not unknown.
Th ose who contract them are despised, and even abhorred,
but money and pigs having been given and received, the
marriage stands. In Lepers’ Island, Omba, the two divisions
are called ‘ bunches of fruit,’ wai vnng, as if all the members
hang on the same stalk. Their story is that when Tagar first
made men he made two, both male, and then one of these
1 To these lesser divisions or family groups my informant (A. Arudulewari)
gives the name of veve, as to the two great kindreds. For example, he and
Walter Gao are of the Wirita family, Tarisuluana is of the Ta Wongi, a place
now deserted ; Vile is Ta Lau of the beach, Tilegi of Suwumea.27
ii.]	Question of Communal Marriage.
took a tuber of qevu, a kind of yam, and threw it at the other,
who at once turned into a woman, and cried with a loud
voice that many men should die because of women. This
woman had two daughters, who fell out; and from one of
these sprang one waivung, and from the second the other.
In case of the adoption of a child by a foster-mother who is of
the other ‘ bunch,’ the secret of the kindred is carefully kept;
the true state of the case is never mentioned by those who
know it, until the time for marriage comes. This is done out
of consideration for the feelings of the adopting parents ; but
the repugnance to marriage within the kin is too great to
allow of permanent concealment.
The system of the division of the people into strictly
exogamous kins is. no .jdraibt. best seen and-considered where
the -division is simple and separates the whole population on
the one ‘ side of the house ’ and the other. Two questions
may here therefore be suitably-raised^... tlie-hrst, whether in
this division there are traces of a communal system of marriage ;
the second, whether the system is sufficient to prevent that
which it seems intended or maintained in order to prevent,
namely, the marriage of persons too closely allied in blood.
In regard to the first question it must be said, on the one
hand, that the people have no memory of a time when all the
women of one side were in fact common wives to the men of
the other side, and that there is no occasion on which the
women become common to the men who are not of their
kin. The license of a gathering at a feast is confessed to be
great, but it is disorderly and illegitimate, and is not defended
on the ground of prescription. If a great man making a feast
gives it to be understood that he will not allow the harmony
of the gathering to be spoilt by jealous quarrelling about
women, it is taken as a festive concession ; if he gives out that
people are to behave well, they know that any one who takes
liberties will have to answer for it, not only, as on ordinary
occasions, to the injured husband, but to the powerful master
of the feast. The stories also of the creation of mankind,
and particularly of woman, represent individual marriage.28
Social Regulations.
[CH.
When Qat wove Iro Lei with pliant rods and made her live, it
was to be his own wife; his brothers tiied to carry her off for
themselves, one woman among eleven of them, but they are
said to be stealing her, not claiming a right. When he
made men, male and female, he assigned to each man his
wife. On the other side is to be set the testimony, the strong
testimony, of words. This is- given by the plural form in
which the terms for ‘ mother ’ and ‘ husband ’ or 1 wife ’ are
expressed. In the Mota language the form is very clear;
ra is the plural prefix; the division, side, or kin, is the veve,
and mother is ra reve; soai is a member, as of a body, or a
component part of a house or of a tree, and ra soai is either
husband or wife. To interpret ra as a prefix of dignity is
forbidden by the full consciousness of the natives themselves
that it expresses plurality. The kin is the veve, a child’s
mother is 1 they of the kin,’ his kindred. A man’s kindred
are not called his veve because they are his mother’s people;
she is called his veve, in the plural, his kindred, as if she were
the representative of the kin ; as if he were not the child of
the particular woman who bore him, but of the whole kindred
for whom she brought him into the world. By a parallel use
to this a plural form is given to the Mota word for child,
reremera, with a doubled plural sign ; a single boy is called not
‘ child ’ but 1 children,’ as if his individuality were not dis-
tinguished from the common offspring of his veve. The same
plural prefix is found in other Banks’ Island words meaning
mother; rave in Santa Maria, retne in Yanua Lava, reme in
Torres Islands. The mother is called rafahi in “Whitsuntide,
and raialdyi in Lepers’ Island, that is the sisters, the sisterhood,
because she represents the sister members of the warning who
are the mothers generally of the children. Similarly the one
word used for husband or wife has the plural form. In Mota
a man does not call his wife a member of him, a component
part of him, but his members, his component parts ; and so a
wrife speaks of her husband. It is not that the man and his
wife make up a composite body between them, but that the
men on the one side and the women on the other make up aii.] Testimony of Words. Agnatic Descent. 29
composite married body. The Mota people know that the
word they use means this; it was owned to myself with a
blush that it was so, with a Melanesian blush, and a protesta-
tion that the word did not represent a fact. The word used
in Motlav, part of Saddle Island, gives hardly the less con-
firmation to this interpretation of the Mota word because it
has not a plural form ; in Motlav ignige has the same meaning
with the Mota soai; a man says of his leg or his arm ignik,
my member, one of my members, and he calls also his wife
ignik, while she calls him the same.
As concerns the second point in cprestion, it is apparent that
the strict rule of'exogamy as regards the kin leaves marriage
open to those who are very near in blood ; for a man is not of
kin to his own children, and a man is not of kin to his
brother^ children. But although it is the intermarriage of
sogoi, members of the same veve, that is strictly forbidden,
and the descent is always counted by the mother, yet the
blood connexion with the father and the father’s near relations
is never out of sight. Consequently the marriage of those
who are near in blood, though they are not sogoi and may
lawfully—marry, is discountenanced. In Mota, for example,
the children of a brother and sister are thought too near to
marry. The brother and sister are both of one veve, A, as
children of one mother; the children of the sister are of her
veveL A; the brother’s children are of the veve B, following
their mother, who must needs be of the other side of the
house. It appears then that the two cousins, children of a
brother and sister, are not sogoi, one being A and the other B,
and that they can marry. But they will not; the match
will not be made ; if they married they would be said to 1 go
wrong V It will be seen that the succession to property
shews the same tendency, perhaps a recent tendency, to the
recognition of agnatic descent.
Florida, and the parts of the Solomon Islands adjacent to it,
afford an example of the division of the people into more than
two exogamous kindreds. In Florida these divisions are six,
1 As in the case of Dudley and Agnes in the Mota pedigree further on.30	Social Regulations.	[ch.
called kema, and each has its distinguishing- name. These
are the Nggaombata, the Manukama or Honggokama, the
Honggokiki, the Kakau, the Himho, and the Lahi. But
these six kema no doubt represent a much simpler original
division; for two of them have local names, of Nggaombata
in Guadalcanal-, and Hirnbo, the Simbo somewhat indefinitely
placed among the islands to the west, from whence these two
kema are known to have come. The Nggaombata and the
Ilimbo, perhaps only as strangers, go together ; and the Lahi,
a small division, are said to be so closely connected with Hirnbo
that the members cannot intermarry. Whether Honggokama
and Manukama are names of one kema, or of two divisions
into which the one is separating, is a cpiestion. The Honggo-
kama and the Ilonggo-kiki, the great and the little, are plainly
parts of one original. It is not the case in Florida that an
originally double division has simply split and split again ;
but the settlement of foreigners has so complicated the
arrangement that few natives profess to be able to follow it h
Yet the foreigners have undoubtedly brought with them a
distinct sense of kinship with one or other of the local kema.
The strict rule of exogamy is not a sufficient limit to the
right of marriage; here also, as in the eastern islands, it is
supplemented by a strong public opinion as to what is right.
A remarkable instance of this occurred a few years ago, when
Takua, a considerable chief, took to himself the daughter
of one of his wives. The girl was not, of course, of his own
kema, and so far he was within his right, but the sense of
decency and propriety of the people was outraged, and the man’s
influence as a chief was much diminished. In Bugotu of Ysabel
there are three vinahuhu: Dhonggokama, Vihuvunagi, and Poso-
1 This is illustrated by the case of Alfred Lombu, who, returning from
Norfolk Island in search of a wife, proposed for a daughter of Takua, the chief
of Mboli. The girl was not of the same kema in name with Lombu, and he
maintained that he was not aware that his kema and hers were in fact the
same; but Takua imposed upon him a heavy fine, seeing an opportunity for
possessing himself of the money accumulated for the marriage, and professing
great indignation at the outrage on propriety.a.]	Florida and Bugotu.	31
mogo, not one of which now corresponds exactly with either of
the Florida kema. Bat the Dhonggokama, they say, is the same
as the ancient kema which has split into the Honggokama
and Honggokiki in Florida; and the other two may be well
believed to be themselves the divided other member of the
original pair. The meaning of the names of three of the
Florida kema, besides the two that are local, are known;
Flonggo is cat’s-cradle, Manukama is an eagle, Kakau is a
crab. It is evident that when the divisions of a people mul-
tiply names must be given them ; where there are two ‘ sides of
the house’ no name is needed for either, but when a man may
have wives and children of three or four kindreds not his own,
a name for each kin is necessary to maintain the matriarchal
system of descent through the mother.
It adds very much to the distinction between these kema,
that each has some one or more luto from which its members
must keep clear, abstain from eating, approaching, or beholding
it1. One of the very first lessons learnt by a Florida child is
what is its buto, its abomination, to eat or touch or see which
would be a dreadful thing. In one case, and in one case only,
this luto is the living creature from which the kema takes its
name; the Kakau kin may not eat the Kakau crab. The
Nggaombat-a may not eat the giant clam; the Lahi may not
eat of a white pig ; the Manukama may not eat the pigeon ;
the Kakau, besides their eponymous crab, may not eat the
parrot Trichoglossus Massena. The Manukama are at liberty
to eat the bird from which they take their name. If the
question be put to any member of these kema he will probably
answer that his luto is his ancestor; a Manukama will say
that the pigeon he does not eat is his ancestor; but an
intelligent native, describing this native custom, writes:—
‘ This is the explanation of the luto. We believe these tindalo
(the object of worship in each kema) to have been once living
men, and something that was with them, or with which they
had to do, has become a thing forbidden, tamlu, and abominable,
1 Thus in ‘ Percy Pomo ’ a man is horrified at seeing blue trousers, the
colour of some part of the inside of the shark, which was his buto.32	Social Regulations.	[ch.
Into, to those to whom the tinclalo belongs.’ He gives the
example of the clam of the Nggaombata. The ghost, tinclalo,
of a famous ancient member of that kema, named Polika,
haunted a beach opposite Mage, and a large snake,poll, was
believed to represent him there. The Nggaombata could not
approach that beach, Polika was their buto1. On another
beach where they catch fish wherewith to sacrifice to Polika
is a gima, a clam, which they call Polika, and used to believe
to be in some way Polika; hence the gima in their Into.
There will occur at once the question whether in this we do
not find totems. But it must be asked where are the totems?
in the living creatures after which two of the divisions are
named, or in those creatures which the members of the several
divisions may not eat? It is true that the Kakau kindred
may not eat the crab kakau ; but the Manukama may eat
the bird manukama. If there be a totem then it must be
found in the buto; in the pigeon of the Manukama and the
giant clam of the Nggaobata, which are said to be ancestors.
But it must be observed that the thing which it is abominable
to eat is never believed to be the ancestor, certainly never the
eponymous ancestor, of the clan ; it is said to represent some
famous former member of the clan, one of a generation beyond
that of the fathers of the present member of it, a kukua. The
thing so far represents him that disrespect to it is disrespect
to him. The most probable explanation of these buto may
indeed throw light upon the origin of totems elsewhere, but
can hardly give totems a home in the Solomon Islands. The
buto of each kema is probably comparatively recent in Florida;
it has been introduced at Bugotu within the memory of living
men. It is in all probability a form of the custom which
prevails in Ulawa, another of the Solomon Islands. It was
observed with surprise when a Mission school was established
1 Na hutodira Gaobata na tidalo cni, That ghost is the buto of the
Nggaombata. The origin of the prohibition is respect for Polika ; those of his
kema would not intrude upon the beach he haunted, nor would they eat the
clain, because the clam on the reef represented him. They have now looked
in vain fur the snake.n.]
Florida Divisions.
33
in that island, that the people of the place would not eat
bananas, and had ceased to plant the tree. It was found
that the origin of this restraint was recent and well re-
membered ; a man of much influence had at his death not
long ago prohibited the eating of bananas after his decease,
saying that he would be in the banana. The elder natives
would still give his name and say, ‘ We cannot eat So-and-
So.’ When a few years had passed, if the restriction had
held its ground, they would have said, ‘ We must not eat
our ancestor.’ This represents what is not uncommon also
in Malanta near Ulawa, where, as in Florida also, a man
will often declare that after death he will be seen as a
shark.
These divisions, Icema, are not political divisions h It is not,
as in the Banks’ Islands where every house must needs contain
members of both divisions, that every kema will be represented
i^_ every village, for one or two of the smaller may have no
member there ; but every man’s wife, or wives, and all his
children, must needs be of a kema different from his own, and
every village must have its population mixed. The property
of the members of each kema is intermixed with that of the
others. In a considerable village the principal chief is the
head of the kema which predominates there, and he exercises
his authority over all, while the principal men of the less
numerous kema are lesser chiefs. It is evident that the pre-
dominance of any kema cannot be permanent. A chief’s sons
are none of them of his own kin ; and, as will be shewn, he
passes on what he can of his property and authority to them.
If then in a certain district one kindred is now most numerous,
in the next generation it cannot be so, for the children of
those now most numerous will be naturally many more in
1 When some outrage on white men has been committed the £ tribe ’ is
supposed responsible; but any party of natives concerned is sure to be
made up of members of both veve or several kema, and some of these prob-
ably do not belong to the place where the outrage is committed. Of the five
natives who cut off the boat at Mandoliana in 1880, only two were of the same
kema, and only one was at home at Gaeta.
D34	Divisions of the People.	[ch.
number, and will none of them be of kin to their fathers.
Thus it was that twenty years ago the Nggaombata was the
dominant Jcema in Florida, and to be a great chief it was said
that a man must be Nggaombata ; but now the Manukama
are rising into the chief place, and supply the chiefs in many
districts of the island.
The system by which the Melanesian people are thus divided
into exogamous groups in which descent follows the mother,
receives of course the name of a Matriarchal system; but it
must be understood that the mother is in no way the head of
the family. The house of the family is the father’s, the
garden is his, the rule and government are his ; it is into the
father’s house that the young bridegroom takes his wife, if
he has not one ready of his own. The closest relationship,
however, according to native notions, is that which exists
between the sister’s son and the mother’s brother, because the
mother who transmits the kinship is not able to render the
service which a man can give. A man’s sons are not of his
own kin, though he acts a father’s part to them ; but the tie
between his sister’s children and himself has the strength of
the traditional bond of all native society, that of kinship
through the mother. The youth as he begins to feel social
wants, over and above the food and shelter that his father
gives him, looks to his mother’s brother as the male re-
presentative of his kin. It is well known that in Fiji the
ram, the sister’s son, has extraordinary rights with his
maternal uncle. The corresponding right is much less con-
spicuous and important than this in the Melanesian Islands
west of Fiji; but it is a matter of course that the nephew
should look to his mother’s brother for help of every kind,
and that the uncle should look upon his sister’s son as his
special care; the closeness of this relation is fundamental.
The connexion of kinship through the mother with the great
exogamous group, and that of blood through the father with
his family, thus stand in clear recognition, and to a certain
extent necessarily conflict one with another. The connexion
caused by marriage between members of the groups andn-]
35
Banks’ Island System.
families is a third relation equally felt and expressed in words.
The terms therefore in which the various degrees of relation-
ship are conveyed fall into three classes; the first of the kin-
ship through the mother, the second of the family generally
on father’s and mother’s side, the third those following on
marriage.
A complete view of the system of relationship with the
terms that express it, in any one native field in Melanesia,
cannot indeed be taken to shew what everywhere prevails,
hut as giving a representative example is very valuable ; the
Mota system, which may well stand for that of the Banks’
group, can perhaps be shewn completely and exactly.
(1)	It has been said that all the members of each of the two
exogamous divisions of the people are sogoi, that is of kin, to
one another ; the only other relation belonging to this kinship
is that between the maternal uncle and his sister’s children,
male and female, expressed in the terms maraui and vanangoi.
The uncle is maraui to his sister’s child, the nephew or niece
is vanangoi to the mother’s brother; but the nephew is also
called maraui to his uncle. The relation passes on to the
second generation ; the children of a man’s sister’s daughters
are his vanangoi, they are still of his kin ; but his sister’s son’s
children are of the other veve, the special tie of kindred is
broken ; they are called his children, being brought up to stand
in the same generation with their parents. A man’s sister’s
child, his vanangoi, stands as if in the same generation with
himself.
(2)	Putting aside connexion by marriage, and the special
relation of the maraui and vanangoi, which follows upon the
passing of kindred through the mother, relationship generally
can be arranged in four successive stages of generation ; the
grandparents, the parents, the children, the grandchildren.
Take the present generation, tarangiu, of young married men
and women; they are brothers and sisters; the generation
above them are their fathers and mothers ; the generation be-
low them are their children ; the generation below that will be
their grandchildren, to whom again all who come before their36 Kinship and Marriage Connexion. [ch.
parents are grandparents and ancestors. The terms tamai
and veve must be translated by father and mother, and are
used generally to all of the same generation with the parents
who are ‘ near ’ and belong to the family connexion. A child,
son or daughter, is ncitai; grandparent and grandchild,
ancestor and descendant, is tupui1. The terms equivalent to
brother and sister are used on a different principle from that
with which we are familiar, and according to which the sex of
the person referred to determines the use of the word. In
Melanesia, as elsewhere, one word describes the relationship
of persons of the same sex, and the other word describes the
relationship of persons of different sexes. Men are tasiu to
men, and women tasiu to women ; men are tutuai to women,
and women tutuai to men. There is a further difference,
the sex being the same, the elder man or woman is turjui to
the younger, the younger man or woman is tasiu to the elder;
but tasiu is the prevailing use. It may be observed in this
system of terms of relationship that all of one generation,
within the family connexion, are called fathers and motfiers of
all the children who form the generation below them; a man’s
brothers are called fathers of his children, a woman’s sisters
are called mothers of her children ; a father’s brothers call his
children theirs, a mother’s sisters call her children theirs.
Upon this it has to be remarked that this wide use of the
terms father and mother does not at all signify any looseness
in the actual view of proper paternity and maternity; they
are content with one word for father and uncle, for mother
and aunt, when the special relation of the kinship of the
mother’s brother does not come in; but the one who speaks
has no confusion as to paternity in his mind, and will correct
a misconception with the explanation, ‘ my own child, tur
1 It may be observed that the principal terms of relationship are generally
the same, not only in the Melanesian islands here in view, but throughout the
languages with which the Melanesian languages are connected ; mother being
an exception. Common words however are not always used in the same appli-
cation, as the Florida tutu is no doubt the Mota tupu.ii.]	A Mota Family.	37
natuk; his real father, tur tamana; tur tasina, his brother not
his cousin V
(3) A general term qaliga embraces all of the other side of
the house who have been brought near by marriage, fathers-
in-law, mothers-in-law, sons- and daughters-in-law, and all
their brothers and sisters. A man and his wife’s brother call
one another wulus, and a woman and her husband’s sister call
one another walu; but the man is also called walu\ and both
terms are extended to the cousins of the husband or wife. A
woman does not call her husband’s brother her brother-in-law ;
she is nothing to him, though her children, being his brother’s
children, are called his. A man calls his daughter-in-law
tawarig. There is, moreover, a term of marriage relation to
which no equivalent exists in English ; parents whose children
have intermarried call one another gasalrt, which may be trans-
lated fellow-wayfarers.
A genealogical table or pedigree of a Mota family (see p. 38)
will supply examples of the various relationships subsisting,
and make clear the application of the various terms. The
two veve, the two sides of the house, are distinguished by the
letters A and B for males, a and b for females. All A and «,
B and b, are sogoi respectively, as belonging to the same side
of the house; and as besides they are ‘ near ’ to one another by
blood, they will call one another tasiu and tutuai when the
relationship strictly conveyed by those words is absent. The
prefix Bo marks a feminine name. The points in the pedigree
marked with asterisks require some explanation, but are
almost entirely covered by the principle that a man’s sister’s
son, his vanangoi, takes his place in the family on the same
1 Before the native use is well understood it is certainly perplexing and
misleading. As an example, a boy named Tarioda came from Araga to Norfolk
Island. Remembering a youth of the same name from the same island, I
enquired if he had anything to do with him ; the boy answered that he was hi
father, and that he had seen him and knew him, meaning that he was a cousin
of his father’s. Such an answer might well be the ground of a statement that
paternity was very little thought of in the New Hebrides. English people
probably had perfectly clear conceptions about family ties before they used the
words uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew and niece.A MOTA PEDIGREE.
(a) Ro Gene == (B) Leveveg
(9) I	(2)
(A) Arisqoe (a) Ro Wawalol = (B) Matevagqoe
(i°)	(11)	|	(13)
(A) Tavrowar
(20)
(.4) Taqale = Ro Sava(6)
(0 I
(B) I Gene = (a) Ro Gene
(6) |
(a) Ro Talevui — (B)
(12) J
(A) Mowur
(21)
--------1---------------------------------1	I------------—■------------
(B) Rivlava == (a) Ro Gene 1(6) Ro Tapermaro == (-4) Woraele	(^) Siplaglano
(3)	(5)	(4) I	(7)	(8)
Sagroro (A) Marostuwale (B) Pantutun = (a) Ro Milerawe (6) Ro Maututun = (.4) Virsai
(14)	(15)	(l6> I	(18)	(17) I (19)
I-------------1
(A) John	(o) Agnes	(B) Dudley
(22)	(23)	(24)
(1) Taqale is tamai to 2, 3, 4, who are natui to him.
tupui to io, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, who are
tupui to him and his wife.
gasala to 6, who is gasala to him.
qaliga to 5, 7, 9, and to 8, all qaliga to him.
(2) Leveveg is tamai to 10, 11, 12, 15, and 22, 23.*
rasoai to 9, who is rasuai to him.
tugui to 3, who is tasiu to him.
tutuai to 4, who is tutuai to him.
maraui to 16, 17, and 24/ who are vanangoi to him.
wulus to 7, 8, who are ivulus to him.
tupui to 20, 21, who are tupui to him.
qaliga to 13, 14, who are qaliga to him.
(4) Ro Tapermaro is natui to 1.
rasoai to 7.
tutuai to 2, 3, and 13.*
veve to 16, 17, 10, 11, 12, and to sister’s children.
tupui to 20, 21, 22, 23, 24.
qaliga to 6, who calls her tawarig.
nothing to 8.
walu to 5, 9.
(8) Siplaglano is tamai to 16 and 17.
(13) Matevagqoe is qaliga to 2, 9, 3, 5, 7.
tutuai to 4.*
wulus to 10.
nothing to 12, 14.
(16) Pantutun is tupui to 20, 21.*
vanangoi to 2 and 3.
tamai to 10, 15.*
(11) Ro Wawalol is natui to 2, 3, 4.
tasiu to 12.
tutuai to 10.
(17) Ro Maututun is veve to 15.*
(24) Dudley is tamai to 22, 23, but calls them tasiu and tutuai.*
(22) John is tamai to 20, 21, but calls them tasiu*
(15) Marostuwale is tasiu to 10.
tutuai to 11.
natui to 16, 17.
(20) Tavrowar is tasiu to 21.II.]
39
A Mot a Family.
level with his uncle, maraui, as if in the place of his mother.
Thus Leveveg is in fact great-uncle to John and Agnes, hut
counts as uncle only because they are grandchildren of his
sister. The grandchildren of his brother are his grandchildren,
tupui, that is his great-nephews and nieces. For the same
reason Leveveg, who is in fact maternal great-uncle to Dudley,
counts as his maternal uncle, maraui, Dudley ascending into
his mother’s place. So Pantutun is first cousin to the mothers
of Tavrowar and Mowur, and, being of the generation above
them, -would he called father or uncle, tamai, and they his
children, if it were not that he is cousin to their mothers
through his mother, whose place therefore he takes on the
second ascending step, and becomes tupui, great-uncle. Thus
he is father, tamai, that is uncle, to his first cousins Arisqoe
and Marostuwale ; and his sister Maututun is their mother or
aunt; because he ascends into his mother’s place, who was
their father’s sister. The same rule makes Dudley father or
uncle properly to his first cousins John and Agnes, though, as
they are of the same generation and older than himself, he
calls them improperly brother and sister: improperly, because
they are not his sogoi, and he could in strictness, though not
with public approval, marry Agnes. It is still more remark-
able that John is properly father or uncle to his second cousins
Tavrowar and Mowur, who are much older than himself; but
his father Pantutun is their great-uncle, tupui, and he is there-
fore their uncle, tamai, or as it naturally sounds to us their
father1. The case of Matevagqoe and Ro Tapermaro is distinct
from this: he married her brother’s daughter, and to do that
must have been of her side of the house, her sogoi. If it had
been her sister’s daughter, she and her niece’s husband would
he qaliga ; but that cannot be between sogoi, so they call them-
selves cousins, brother and sister.
The pedigree here exhibited does not shew the polygamy
1 It sometimes happens that a boy is in this way * father ’ to one old enough
to be his natural father, or ‘ grandfather,’ tupui, to one of his own age. When
it is so the formal relationship is practically merged in the general tasiu,
brotherhood.40 Kinship and Marriage Connexion. [ch.
which existed in its early stages, and it may he asked whether
the terms of relationship would not undergo some change in
such a case ; whether, for example, the sons of the same father
hy two mothers would not he distinguished from the sons of
the same father and mother. The answer is that no difference
is made. A man’s wives, if he should have many, must all be
sogoi, of the same side of the house, calling one another sisters,
and calling each the other’s children hers, whether they were
married to the same man or had different husbands. This
does not however shut out altogether the relationship of
step-father and mother. A man who has a son hy one of his
wives who is dead, does not bring in a step-mother to the boy
if he adds another to his living wives; the woman would
come in as another mother, and the hoy would take no notice.
But if a woman with children loses her husband, and becomes
the wife of a man who is not ‘ near ’ to her previous husband,
being of course sogoi but with no recent blood relation, the
man will come in as step-father, and the term usur, successor,
is applied to him, the connexion being called usur-gae, bond of
succession. A looser connexion than this is enough to make
an mur\ as when a boy’s father has had a wife, not the
mother of the boy, who after becoming a widow marries
another man ; the boy will take liberties with the man as
having come into his father’s place; he will take yams from
his garden. When a step-father sneezes the step-son will cry
out, Maiia revereve gam o sn/a/e ! a sneeze to draw out a worm
for you! the notion being that the former husband has a
certain grudge against his successor, and sends a worm from a
point of land on which ghosts congregate.
Where, as in Florida and the neighbouring parts of the
Solomon Islands, the divisions of the people are three, four, or
six, and where a man may have a w7ife or wives from any one
of-them but his own, it would seem likely to be more difficult
to keep accurate count of the various degrees of relationship
in which people stand to one another ; and it is probable that,
though the native system is precise in following every step
and connexion, the people do in fact content themselves com-II.]
Florida Terms.
4i
monly with general terms. The special relation of the sister’s
son to his mother’s brother is of course conspicuous ; each calls
the other tumbu; and this term is applied also to the father’s
mother’s brother by his grand-nephew, and by the great-uncle
to his sister’s grandchild. In a generation of members of the
same kema all of them call one another Jiogo in the same sex,
and, with more or less attention to nearness of blood, brothers
and sisters ; that is to say, an elder brother or sister is tug a to
one of the same sex, and a younger brother or sister is tali,
while a brother or sister is ravine to one of the other sex.
With the exception of the mother’s brother, the blood rela-
tions of the ascending generation are all father and mother,
tania and tina. In the generation above, with the exception
of the father’s mother’s brother aforesaid, who is tumbu, all
male and female are kukua. In descending a man’s sons and
daughters, and his brother’s and cousin’s children, are dale,
distinguished as dale mane and dale vaivine, according to sex,
a man’s sister’s child being tumbu; and in the same way a
woman’s children and her sister’s and female cousin’s children
and her husband’s brother’s and sister’s children are all her
children, dale mane male, dale vaivine female. Descending to
the next generation, all are again kulcua to their grandparents
and great uncles and aunts, and all above them ; except that,
as aforesaid, the relation of tumbu subsists between a great-
nephew and his father’s mother’s brother. Husband and wife
are tau. A father- or mother-in-law, and son- or daughter-in-
law, is vungo, the term being applied widely to persons con-
nected by marriage wTho are not of the same generation.
Brothers- and sisters-in-law, and generally persons of the same
generation connected by marriage, are iva to one another1.
It would seem that the absence of exogamous divisions of
the population in that region of the Solomon Islands in which
descent follows the father (namely, in Malanta, about Cape
ZSlee, in Ulawa, and in San Cristoval), must make the system
1 The word mavu, which is used for ‘ namesake,’is also used as a term
of family relationship. Unfortunately the full list of Florida terms made by
me many years ago lacks a key.42 Kinship and Marriage Connexion. [ch.
of family relationship very different there from that which
has been described as prevailing in the Banks’ Islands and in
Florida. To a very considerable extent no doubt this is so;
but it is improbable that the peculiar closeness of relation
between a man and his sister’s son should entirely fail to ap-
pear. Of this I have little evidence to offer1; the families are
formed upon the father, and the only restriction upon marriage
is nearness in blood. To whatever extent, however, it may be
that descent through the father removes that characteristic
feature of the Melanesian family system which appears in the
relation between the maternal uncle and his sister’s child, it is
certain that the main structure is the same as elsewhere ; that is
to say, that no terms corresponding to uncle and aunt, nephew
and niece, or cousin exist. All on the same level are brothers
and sisters, if children of brothers and sisters or of cousins;
they look upon the children of brothers, sisters and cousins
as their children, and the children call them all fathers and
mothers; the ancestors above father and mother, and the
descendants in the second and lower generations, are all united
under one general term, which covers ancestry and posterity
alike. At Wango in San Cristoval, where owing to immo-
rality and infanticide the population has been kept up by the
adoption of children from the bush, adopted children take the
position in the family which would have been theirs if they
had been horn in it; although no blood relationship exists, they
cannot marry those who are near through the adoptive father.
These children appear to be by traders called slaves because they
are bought; the people themselves call them their children.
The subject of marriage relations is incomplete without notice
of the reserve so remarkably exercised towards the persons
and names of those who have become connected by marriage.
This is conspicuous in the Banks’ Islands, and makes hut
little show in the Solomon Islands. In Lepers’ Island, a
1 From Rev. R. B. Comins I learn that at Wango and Fagani in San
Cristoval the term for the relation between the maternal uncle and his sister’s
child is mau. The terms iha, if a, hungo, fungo, are the Florida iva and
vungo; ’ama, 'ina, ’a si, are tama, tina, tahi.II.]
Reserve and A voidance.
43
singular reserve is strongly shewn, as it is in Fiji, by brothers
and sisters, and also by mothers and sons; but this reserve,
though its existence and its cause may well throw light upon
that exercised between those connected by marriage, has no
proper place here. In Florida, in the Solomon Islands, there
is no difficulty about meeting, or mentioning the name of,
father- or mother-in-law, or any of a wife’s kindred, and no
extraordinary marks of respect are shewn. It is the same at
Saa. The extraordinary separation of the sexes in Santa
Cruz and the neighbouring islands, however instructive to
observe in this connexion, does not follow on relation by
marriage. In the Banks’ Islands the rules of avoidance and
reserve are very strict and minute. As regards_the avoidance
of the person, a man will not come near his wife’s mother;
the avoidance is mutual; if the two chance to meet in a path,
the woman will step out of it and stand with her back turned
till he has gone by, or perhaps if it be more convenient he
will move out of the way. At Vanua Lava, in Port Patteson,
a man would not follow his mother-in-law along the beach,
nor she him, until the tide had washed out the footsteps of the
first traveller from the sand. At the same time a man and his
mother-in-law will talk at a distance. A man does not avoid
his father-in-law, nor a woman hers. A man does not avoid
his wife’s brother, but will not sleep with him; he does not
avoid his son’s wife, or his own wife’s sister. Boys and girls
who are engaged generally avoid one another, hut through
shyness, not by rule. Where the persons above mentioned do
not avoid one another, they are careful to shew respect in not
taking anything from above the head or stepping over the
legs of a father-in-law or wife’s brother. It is disrespectful
at all times for a young man to take anything from above an
elder man’s head, for there is something naturally sacred,
rongo, about the head, and no one will take the liberty of
stepping over the legs of any but a brother or intimate friend.
To avoid the mention of a name shews a lower degree of
respect than to avoid a person. A man who sits and talks
with his wife’s father will not mention his name, much less hisA inshif' <//:</ ,IAoriihy f 'onth'.\iou.
I
wilr'ii inohlmr'n iin.mo , a 11in11 will mil, iinmo liiw wil'ini Itruhlmr,
Iml, lin will iiniik' Inn wilnn nniliiir, iilm in nnhlun^' In Imn, A
woman will mil, iinim<, Iml, ilnon mil nvniil, Inn 111 ml mill I
In 111 <i nlm will mi mi iinnniinli iiiiinn linr i III 11^-111 <> r n IiiimIiiiiiiI,
Two |inn|iln w Inmn nlnUinn limn Inlormnrrmil, wild 11in ifiimifil,
will mil, inniin nimli nllinr. Tim rniimvn willi rn^'iiril In Uni
lullin' nshrmln In him linn nl ih, nl' nl' ii.ii>' | in r I, nl 11, 111 nniniunil
uunvnniil.l mil A mini nil nnn nnnilMinil iijinltn In inn nl' liin
linimn mi n. nlmil, mill w linn I,Iml, wn.H mil umlornhnoil, wnlih mill
l,nnnlinil ih willi 11 in IiimiiI hn nlinw w lull, lin im'iillh | n 11111 li * n 11, y
lining i-ihill 111n111 In lunlunl rnllllil hn |in Mlll'o Mini nn nnn WIIM
linin' nml \v11in|mi'nil, mil, him iiiiinn nl Inn nmi'n wil'n, Iml, IJm
r«'ii|ii'<■ Mi11 iu11>nI iI,iihn Ini' Imr lullin', iilili'il l\l n/i’i/nilil, nlm wild
willi willi In,, run, nml wliuiiu nn mu wuM Tn uiimnn, lliml liunnn',
Tlinn, rrli'i i in*’; hn him Mnhn |iuilif.ri,nn jjj'ivnn nn |iilfi,'n jll, linvn
vun; cnnlil uni, ni-lu Inn cuiiiuiuii woriln lllil/i', hn din, nr ,/<„/,
in,";, Iici'iiUHu nl In nun in Imv Mn,huvnfu|un , V mini I'ulllil uni nnil
him cumiuon wui'iln jnuii/, liiiml, nr /ii/im, Imh, liuuminn nl Inn
Wil'n n lirulilinr'u imiiir, in uvnn him imiimrnl lllll'ii/r, nnn, Inriuiun
nl Inn will 'm 111111111111 iiuiim. Tn nmuh 111<> ililliuulhy I'liiincil I>y
Hun limihnhinn nl vuuulnilnry, n wuul limy lin unuil ln11il'o|mrly
lil.n /uil/n,	nliml,	In I nun,	Imiiilu ; nr u	Liu In mny lin uillli'il II,
• ■ill,I,cr nml	n, Imw	n nlmuhur , Iml, hlmrn	in n, nhuul. nl' wuuln l,r|,h
in mm lor I Inn very |iur|innn, hn imn wliieli innhi'inl nl him cuinmuil
vvnriln in rnlli'il hn nn. Tlum him nn wuriln unuil in him einmn
muni,lunuil uliovu vvuulil lm /iiii’Wiltl I'nr linn, Ml Jil'Ol'tt Ini'
/nnn I'nr /iiinri, ini I’m / II mil In'".	Tliin ll.vnulnlmn nl' him |inmnn
nml nl' him nil,mu in ui'.erilmil |,y him nnhivuH hliuniW'lvuM In n,
InnIiii^i' nl uliynuHH nml ruii|ii'i h, n, eerhnin invvnul hrunililin^'
1 I In word miHihi,	wil,li him,	In nmd iml, only	lor it, wll*'m mi,him Iml, in jilarn
ol ' IiIm wild	; mu 1 iinniln, inn,	l,lnn uaid Ii in wlln In I,In. oi»,mm rnfnri'nd l,n,
'I ii,win Imn, I,In niMiio of I,lm diMiisId.or )n law, nniil.alnu 1,1 m• wold him, Imnu*
I In ht,I,In » ol 1 ii,wiirinni,, ii.fjuin, oonld nol, omo I,In, < 0111111011 wol d I'm l«n jni, tiiiilfi,
In 1-anno 11, ih | hi,11, ol Ini IiiihIiii,lid’ll nan in, IVI nl<//o»ni,.
'I I10110 uu woidu in 1 |iii,rl,lnnlaiIy vidmddn, Imohiiho |,|my nil,mi ulmw ii
ooiiiionion w11,1» ol'li01 Inn//nii,//i m will' ll doon nol, »i,|»jk a» In mni'u nominnii woidu
Woidu inn 1 mh I n void,od lor I.IiIh |mijinu<, t woidu arn 1,11,Imn wlildli Hn
< omjiii,ral,ivol y nnnu« d hi l,lm litnj/na|/n.AVav/yv in the Hew Hebrides,
■15
"•1
which t-hev snv prevents their mi'iil ioniny their own niunw
also; |.o blurt out a name in t-o ink*' a liberty, l-o avoid the use
of i(. shews delicate respect , mid one will extend Mi is respect
lo more distant- connexions nildu'r limn apply it loo narrowly.
A native wIkmi asked the uanu' i>I some olher, will often (urn
t-o some bystander w ho answers lot1 him, and the explanation
i< yiven in llio mil' word i/ti/ioii. Ixospeot- is also shown in
Mot« hv vising' a dual pronoun in nddiessiny or spoakiny id’
a sinyle porson ; 'Whore ntv yon two yoiny? is nskod (>I'
a ■.i, as ifhot.li Imshand and w ill' wore present.
In tin' Now llohridos Ilu' practice is nuioh tin' same.
In liopoi's' Island a man speaks t«* his mother-in-law, and
she to him, hut they will ind emne near ; when In' speaks lo
her she turns awav, A mother-in-law im- lather-in-law does
not mind usiny the name of dauyhtors Imshand in' sons
wife in spoakiny id' them t(' otliers, hut eaniud use it m
addrossiny them. W lion a woman calls to her sou-in law she
addresses him as , you in tin' plural; when she sends
a mess,aye to him she savs, usiny his name, ‘ they want
Tanya to yo to them,' that is, '1 want- Tanya to come to me.
A dauyhter-in law does not- avoid her hushand s lather, a
man sends his wile with in ossa yes to his father. A man will
not speak at all t he name of his wile's brother: speakiny el
him ho savs. • m\ hvothor in-law ,’ spoakiny to him he says,
’you' in the plural; if he meets him in the path he turns
aside, and asks • W here are von (.plurall yoiny r In this ease
iMilv it appi-ai-s that the name is never spoken; the reserve
amony connexions hv marriaye is much less marked than that
between hrothor and sister No one will step across the leys
ot another, or take anvthiny from over his head, especially
a brother s; that is thouyht a serious piece ot disrespect-, lu
the noiyhl'ouriny island of Araya, Pentecost, the intercourse
of fathers- and mothers-in-law with their dauyhters husK-ind
or son's wife is very little restricted; the ehiel, it not the
only. reserve in spoakiny is exorcised b\ onynyed couples
before the yiv my of property for the yirl is complete : 'his is
called os.tiy.CHAPTER III.
SOCIAL REGULATIONS. CHIEFS.
It has been shewn that the social structure in these Mela-
nesian islands is not tribal, and it will have been observed
therefore that there can be no political structure held together
by the power of tribal chiefs; but chiefs exist, and still have
in most islands important place and power, though never
perhaps so much importance in the native view as they have
in the eyes of European visitors, who carry with them the
persuasion that savage people are always ruled by chiefs. A
trader or other visitor looks for a chief, and finds such a one
as he expects; a very insignificant person in this way comes
to be called, and to call himself, the king of his island, and
his consideration among his own people is of course enor-
mously enhanced by what white people make of him. The
practice moreover of the commanders of ships of war by which
local chiefs are held responsible for the conduct of their people,
and are treated as if they had considerable power, undoubtedly
increases their importance, nor can that result be regretted.
As a matter of fact the power of chiefs has hitherto rested
upon the belief in their supernatural power derived from the
spirits or ghosts with which they had intercourse. As this
belief has failed, in the Banks’ Islands for example some time
ago, the position of a chief has tended to become obscure ; and
as this belief is now being generally undermined a new kind
of chief must needs arise, unless a time of anarchy is to begin.
It will be well probably at the outset to give the account of a
chief’s power and government in the Solomon Islands, the
Banks’ Islands, and the New Hebrides, as supplied by natives47
Power of Chiefs.
of those groups respectively, who well knew what they were
speaking about. A Florida Vnnagi kept order iu his place,
directed the common operations and industries, represented
his people with strangers, presided at sacrifices and led in war.
He inflicted fines, and would order any one to he put to death.
At Saa in Malanta the chief, Maelaha, is such by virtue of
descent, a remarkable difference existing in many points
between this people and Melanesians generally; the people
work in his gardens, plant for him, build a house or canoe for
him at his word. He inflicts fines, and can older a man to be
put to death. At Banks’ Islands the Tavusmele or Etvusmel
in former days kept order, gave commands about the common
concerns of the place, arranged difficulties with neighbouring
villages, could order an offender (one for example who had be-
witched or poisoned another) to be put to death, or to pay a
fine of pigs. In Lepers’ Island the Jlatahigi commands or
forbids in such matters as fishing, voyaging, and building;
he can order an offender to be shot or clubbed, or to give
a fine of pigs. In each of these cases it may be added that
the chief has with him young men who have attached them-
selves to him and carry out his commands, and that the
chief has no more property in or dominion over land than
another man. Further details as to the position and power of
chiefs in the various islands will be hereafter given.
A point of difference between the Polynesian and Mela-
nesian sections of the Pacific peoples is the conspicuous
presence in the former, and the no less conspicuous absence
in the latter, of native history and tradition. In the
Melanesian islands, with one notable exception, the enquirer
seeks in vain for antiquity; the memory of the past perishes
quickly where all things soon pass away, where every building
soon decays, where life is short, and no marked change of
seasons makes people count by longer measures of time than
months. Winle any one lives who remembers some famous
man of the past his fame lingers, but it dies with the personal
remembrance; a man’s ancestry goes back so far as living
memory extends; historical tradition can hardly be said to48	Social Regulations.	[ch.
exist. It is true that in Motlav, part of Saddle Island in
the Banks’ group, the people who now live in the islet of Ra
and the coast opposite know where their families came from,
from neighbouring islands, Mota, Vanua Lava, or from other
parts of Saddle Island; hut it was only lately they say that
they came to live where they are. In Araga, Pentecost
Island of the New Hebrides, they shew their original seat at
Atabulu, a village still remaining and held in high respect.
But the little history that remains, and is vouched for by a
multitude of sepulchral stones, is lost in the leg-end attaching
to a sacred stone, of winged shape, lying in the village place.
It is called Yingaga, Flyer with webbed wings, and represents
one Yingaga, who came floating in a canoe to shore and
founded that town. People, ata, collected and abode with him,
lulu; after a time he flew back to heaven. Ancient house
sites, raised perhaps a yard above the ground, are to be seen at
Atabulu, and at Anwalu near by, with stones over the graves
of forgotten chiefs. In Maewo great heaps of stones mark the
graves of great men of old times, such as none have been of
late. In Motlav, near a famous and enormous natu tree, is a
house-mound five feet high, where no habitations are now,
and men say that it came down from his ancestors to the last
man whose house stood on it; and this is but a single known
representative of the yam of a Fiji family of rank1. The
remarkable exception to this absence of history or tradition is
found at Saa in Malanta, and is so remarkable and characteristic
of native life that the story must be told at length. The larger
and principal part of the present inhabitants of Saa ani menu
came from Saa baalu, inland not very far off, eleven generations
ago. The migration took place under the following circum-
stances. There were four brothers at the ancient Saa, of whom
the eldest was the chief; two were named Pau-ulo, the eldest
Pauulo paina, the great, the second Pauulo oou, the champion;
1 Mr. Fison writes, ‘ The higher the house-mound, the higher its occupant’s
rank : sa cere na no<lra yavu, their house-mound is high, is still used to express
that a family is of high rank/ The yavu is described as the ancestral town-lot
on which the house is built.III.]
49
History of Saa.
the two younger had the same name, Ro Ute sen oo’u h
The chief was a quiet man; the two youngest, aided by the
second, were always fighting and damaging their neighbours’
property; all Pauulo Paina’s money was spent in paying
compensation for their injuries and in making peace, and he
told them he must leave them and go away. The neighbouring-
people, however, determined to make an end of their trouble ;
they collected, and began to surround the village of Saa as
night fell. Before their circle was complete the Saa people
learnt their danger, gathered their women and children, and
escaped unseen and unheard in the darkness, carrying with
them three drums, which remained at the present Saa within
the memory of old men yet alive. But when they were clear
of the enemy and safe outside their line, they remembered
that a bunch of areca-nuts from which Pauulo Paina had
already taken some to chew with his betel leaves, and which
would furnish means to the enemy of working his death
with charms, was left behind. The two Ute agreed that
one of them, if he died for it, must go for the nuts to save the
elder brother, and the younger of tbe two took on himself the
danger because he was the younger. The circle was now
closed round the village, but it was still dark, and the enemy
knowing nothing of the escape sat waiting for the dawn to
make their onset. The young Ute took his seat among them
as one of their party, and after a while said to them that he
would steal in and see whether the Saa people were safe in
their houses and could be surprised. Thus he passed through
to the empty village, climbed the palm with a rope round his
feet, gathered all the nuts remaining on the tree, and as he
came down so twisted the stem that when his feet touched
the ground it split into four, and fell with a crash upon the
house. The enemy hearing the sound thought that the Saa
people were not yet all asleep, and sat still; Ute managed to
pass through them unperceived with his nuts, and joined his
friends. Thus they escaped and descended towards the coast;
1 The two haying the same name were the ‘Bonito-gutter champions’; the
Saa oo u being the Mota wowut, a fine fellow, a favourite, a hero.
E50
[CH.
Chiefs.
and when they came to a fork where the path divided Pauulo
Paina made a speech, saying- that no fighters, bullies, thieves,
or wizards were to follow him. One party then branched off
with Pauulo Oou; and lower down a second separation was
made, so that in the end three settlements were formed of
people who counted themselves of kin. The inhabitants of
what is now Saa ani menu received the fugitives with Pauulo
Paina, and his descendants in the male line have ever since
been the hereditary chiefs1. The descendants of the old in-
habitants are now but few and of the lower orders, but they
are still the owners of the land. It lias never occurred to the
Saa immigrants to dispossess them; the new-comers remain,
even the chiefs, landless men, except so far as a little has been
given to them and a little sold ; they have always been
allowed what they wanted for their gardens, and have been con-
tent. When the move was made there was no great difference
in speech, and there is none now in words; hut the older
race speak very slowly, and may be distinguished now by that
slow habit of speech.
There are then at Saa, and at the other two settlements
founded by the refugees from the ancient Saa, a family of
chiefs with a history, and with descent in the male line. All
of that family are born in a certain sense chiefs, the eldest son
succeeding to the position of his father as principal chief
unless he be judged incompetent. If he turns out a bad,
vicious man he loses respect and power, and his brother in-
sensibly replaces him. Sometimes a man will retire because
he knows his own unfitness 2. The chief's power therefore
1	The eleven generations from Pauulo to the present chiefs are kept in mincl
by the invocation of their successive names in sacrifices.
2	At the time of writing the above there were three chiefs of high rank at
Saa : the ostensible and acting chief was Dorawewe, but he is only the third
son of his father, the late head chief. The son and heir of the eldest son was not
yet grown up; respect was paid to him for his birth, but he had little power, and
the less because his character was bad and he went after women, and so did
not gain personal respect. Wateliaaodo, uncle on the mother’s side to the young
man, and himself of the chief’s family, was guardian to him, and thence was an
important man. It should be observed that thus the particularly close relationhi.]	Hereditary Element.	51
at Saa comes from his birth and personal qualities, not from his
intimacy with supernatural beings and his magical know-
ledge ; he may have these, and is in fact pretty sure to
have them, but if one, like Dorawewe now, sacrifices for
the family, it is not as chief, but because he has had the
knowledge how to do it passed on to him. In the same way
the chief curses in the name of a lid a, powerful ghost, for-
bidding something to be done under the penalty of death,
taboos, because of his ancestral connexion with that lid a.
He inherits wealth from his father, and adds to it by the fines
he imposes and by the gifts of the people; but no wealth or
success in war could make a man a chief at Saa if not born of
the chief’s family1.
The hereditary element is not absent in the succession of
chiefs in other islands, though it is by no means so operative
as it appears to be. A story hereafter to be narrated illustrates
the manner in which a man becomes a chief in Santa Cruz.
The most conspicuous chief in Florida at the time and in the
place in which Europeans became acquainted with that island
was Takua of Boli, whose position it may be safely said was
never so exalted in the eyes of the natives as in the eyes of their
visitors. He was not a native of Florida bu' of Mala, and his
greatness rested in its origin on a victory in which as a young
man he took a principal part, when a confederation of enemies
attacked the people of Ta na ihu in Florida, where he was then
staying. His reputation for mam, spiritual jiower, was then
established; and from that, as a member of a powerful family
of the Nggaombata, with his brothers Sauvui and Dikea, his
of the mother’s brother to his nephew maintains itself where the system has
become patriarchal.
1 The word used to designate a chief in Malanta, Ulawa, and San Cristoval,
ma'erdha, maelaha, means literally great death or war, and shews that to the
native mind a chief is a warrior. It is customary both at Saa and in Arosi,
San Cristoval, to adopt by purchase into the chief’s family a boy who promises
to be a stout warrior, and to bring him up to be the fighting man and champion
of the town. Such a one I remember to have seen at Ubuna in Arosi, a dwarf,
whom his purchasers had taken to be a remarkably strong and sturdy child,
when he was really a boy much older than they thought. He turned out to be a
uLueraha indeed who scorned to use a shorter spear than full-grown men.52
[CH.
Chiefs.
influence increased. Thus according1 to a native account of the
matter 1 the origin of the power of chiefs, vunagi, lies entirely
in the belief that they have communication with powerful
ghosts, tindalo, and have that mana whereby they are able to
bring the power of the tindalo to bear.’ A chief would convey
his knowledge of the way to approach and to use the power
of the tindalo to his son, his nephew, his grandson, to whom
also he bequeathed as far as he could his possessions. Thus he
was able to pass on his power to a chosen successor among his
relations, and a semblance of hereditary succession appeared.
A man’s position being in this way obtained, his own character
ana success enhanced it, weakness and failure lost it. Public
opinion supported him in his claim for a general obedience,
besides the dread universally felt of the tindalo power behind
him. Thus if he imposed a fine, it was paid because his
authority to impose it was recognized, and because it was
firmly believed that he could bring calamity and sickness upon
those who resisted him; as soon as any considerable number
of his people began to disbelieve in his tindalo his power to fine
was shaken. But a chief had around him a band of retainers,
young men mostly, from different poarts of the island some of
them, of various kema, who hung about him, living in his
canoe-house, where they were always ready to do his bidding:
These fought beside him and for him, executed his orders for
punishment or rapine, got a share of his wealth, and did all
they could to please him and grow great and wealthy with
him. They would marry and settle round him if strangers
in the place ; and thus a chief and his retainers would be by
no means always the representatives of the p>eopde among
whom they ruled, and who sometimes have suffered for their
misdeeds1. The influence of a chief, if his band of retainers
is large, and the district in which he rules is piopjulous, extends
widely in the island ; his brother chiefs aid him, and, for a
consideration, carry out his wishes 2. The power to impose a
1	Julian Avenal, not Fergus McIvor, represents1 such a Melanesian chief.
2	Some years ago the captain of one of Her Majesty’s ships laid upon Takua
of Mboli the duty of apprehending a certain offender, and keeping him am.]
Chiefs in Florida.	33,
fine was an active one ; a chief forbids under penalty of a
fine, which is a form of taboo ; he orders one who has done
wrong or has offended him t.o pay a certain sum of money to
him. Thus Takua imposed a heavy fine on the man who had
proposed to marry within the prohibited degrees, and the
offender had to hire an advocate to state his case discreetly,
apologize, and beg off a part of the fine. The chief sends
women or boys to fetch the fine he has imposed; these sit at.
the man’s door and dae, dun him by their presence and
demands, till he pays. If he refuses, the chief sends his
retainers to destroy and carry away his property. It is evident
that a chief of sense, energy and good feeling, will use his
power on the whole to the great advantage of the people : but
a bad use of a chiefs power is naturally common, in oppression,
seizing land and property, increasing his stock of heads, and
gaining a terrible reputation. For example, a man who had
a private enemy would give money to a chief to have him
killed, as one did not long ago to Dikea ; Dikea would send
one of his young men to kill him. But sometimes the man
would know his danger and send more money to the chief to
save his life. Dikea would take both sums and do as he
pleased.
The power of a chief naturally diminished in old age, from
inactivity, parsimony, and loss of reputation ; and, to the credit
of the people, also if, like Takua when he took the daughter of
one who was already his wife, he did what was held by them
to be wrong. In any case some one was ready, it might be by
degrees, to take the place of one whose force was waning. A
chief expiecting his death prepared his son, nephew, or chosen
prisoner till his return; so at least the captain’s orders were interpreted to the
chief. Takua complained; he could have him killed easily, he said, it would
cost him but a trifle to get that done, but to catch a man and keep him for ten
months would be very difficult and very expensive. Things are now changed
at Florida. Dikea of Ravu accused two men of taking fragments of his food
to charm him; they fled to Olevuga; Dikea sent money to Lipa, chief of that
place, to have them killed; Lipa sent it back. Dikea then sent money to
Tambukoru of Honggo, asking him to attack Olevuga; that chief refused, but
kept the money.54
[CH.
Chiefs.
successor, by imparting to him his tindalo knowledge ; but this
could not always be done, or the choice made might not be
acceptable. The people then would choose for themselves, and
make over the dead chief’s property to their chosen head.
Sometimes a man would assert himself and claim to be chief,
on the ground that the late chief had designated him, or
because he had already a considerable following (belonging
perhaps to an increasing kema, as the dead chief to a de-
creasing one), or boldly standing forth and crying out to the
people that he was chief. Without a chief a village would be
broken up 1.
The very great part played in the native life of the Banks’
Islands by the secret societies hereafter to be described, the
Suqe and Tamate, has always obscured the appearance of such
power as a chief would be expected to exercise. Any man
whose influence was conspicuous was certainly high in these
societies, and it would be wholly inconsistent with the social
habits of the people that a man whose place in the Suqe was
insignificant should have any considerable power. Hence
chiefs as such have hardly been recognized by the missionaries
engaged in this group, though traders have found chiefs and
kings. When Mala many years ago forbade the use of bows,
it was taken to be done by the power he had in all the societies
1 Some years ago Lipa, the chief of Olevuga, was carried off as ‘labour’
to Queensland, and the chiefless place was in confusion ; but Dikea of Ravu in
the neighbourhood, one of the same Nggaombata family, sent directions
to Olevuga that the people should choose their chief, and then came over with
his party, and took Kosapau, whom they had chosen, by the hand, putting him
forward as their chief. The people then knew that he would be supported, and
obeyed him. But Lipa came back after a time, and Kosapau quietly took the second
place. When Kalekona of Gaeta died there was no one to succeed him; the
chiefs of the other districts, his cousins, came to get their share of the property,
and were hospitably entertained ; but the chiefs of Honggo, Liukolilia and
Tambukoru, of the Manukama Tcema, would have attacked the Gaeta people in
their headless state, if Charles Sapimbuana, the Christian teacher, himself a
Manukama, had not got pigs and money together and bought them off. With-
out a chief the Gaeta people would have dispersed ; no Christian could be a chief
of the ancient sort, and the Christian teachers had all agreed among themselves
that they would take no place of such authority.nr-]	Chiefs m Banks Islands.	55
in V anua Lava and Mota. Still there was a name meaning"
chief, etvusmel, tavusmele, and a native of Motlav who resided
some weeks in Florida, in the district where Takua was counted
a great chief, bears witness that he saw no great difference
between that vvnagi and the etvusmel of his own home 1. The
succession of the Etvusmel is declared by him to have been
from father to son, as far as can be remembered, an important
point to notice where descent in family goes by the mother; and
it is said that the chief was always of the great clan or kin,
the veve liwoa, an expression which also requires explanation.
The explanation is that in practice, as in the devolution of
property and in the handing on of religious and magic rites,
a man always put as far as he could his son into his own place,
and a rich and powerful man would secure a high place in the
Suqe for his son in very early years ; thus the great man’s
son would succeed to his place, and become to some extent an
hereditary chief. The father and the son would always be of
different sides of the house; and, as at Florida the chiefs were
generally of the kernel which happened to be most numerous
at the time, so in the Banks’ Islands, where the divisions are
but two, and each of them in alternate generations more
numerous than the other, the chief man was regularly found
on the most powerful side of the house. Thus it can be said
that the succession of Etvusmel at Motlav has been from
father to son as long as can be remembered, and will so con-
tinue, though with lessened consequence. Besides those who
were really chiefs many men were called ‘great men,’ and had
considerable influence in their villages, men who had been
1 The name no doubt refers to the rank obtained in the Suqe club by
killing pigs ; Ta vas mele is the man who kills for the mele. Even now when
the population of Motlav is Christian, they still among themselves call Stephen
Etvusmel at Losalav, and Abraham at Melwo, ‘o ml we toga alalanrara, pa
gate noin mava taraa we tuai, the people remain under those two, but do not
regard them with the same respect as in old days.’ At Losalav the former
Etvusmel, Molovlad, left a son who is now under Stephen; and when the latter
dies this John Semtambok will succeed. So they agree among themselves now,
on the ground that he is the son of the late chief, high in the Suqe club, and o;
the side of the house that now predominates, i.e. of the veve liwoa.56
[C'H.
Chiefs.
valiant and successful in war, and were high in the Suqe ; that
is to say, men who were known to have mana, for a man’s
charms and amulets made him the great warrior, and his
charms and stones made his pigs and yams to multiply, so that
he could buy his steps in the society. The cleanliness and order
of a Banks’ Island village are not now what they were, since
the authority of the ‘ great men ’ has been diminished by the
increasing enlightenment of the young people.
In the Northern New Hebrides the position of a chief is
more conspicuous ; though perhaps only because those who
first made themselves acquainted with those islands have
always taken them to be very important people. A man high
in the Suqe, or a successful leader in war, had authority in
his village in the northern part of Aurora, hut seems to have
had no designation as a chief. In Araga, Pentecost Island,
and in Omba, Lepers’ Island, the remarkable designation of a
chief is Ratahigi, the word which stands for ‘mother’ in
those islands, and is no doubt identical with the biota rat-aim,
brothers. The probable origin of the use of a word meaning
brotherhood or sisterhood as the name for the mother has
been already suggested (page 2<S); the use of it to designate
a chief seems certainly to point to the fact that the chief
is looked upon as the representative of the brotherhood, of the
kin. As has been pointed out, where there are two kindreds,
and the son is not of the father’s kin, it is natural that each
kindred should preponderate in influence, because more in
number, alternately, and that as son succeeds father, one
of this kindred and the other of that, each in his turn should
belong to the kin which is in his time the great one. Hence
they say that chiefs are hereditary, father being succeeded by
son, or uncle by sister’s son, in a general way as a matter of
fact, though not always nor by rule. The son does not inherit
chieftainship, but he inherits, if his father can manage it,
what gives him chieftainship, his father’s maim, his charms,
magic songs, stones and apparatus, his knowledge of the way
to approach spiritual beings, as well as his property. The
present chief will teach his son his knowledge of supernaturalIII.]
57
Chiefs in New Hebrides.
things, and hand over his means for using it; he will buy him
up high in the Suqe society, and give him and leave him
property; so the younger man is ready to take the place of
chief when his father dies or fails through age. If a man
has no son competent he may take his nephew ; sometimes,
the son perhaps being too young, a chief’s brother will
succeed him ; sometimes a man will set himself up when no
successor is acknowledged, or the people will choose some one
to lead them. Some years ago Mairuru, the chief of
Walurigi, was a very great man ; he sent his son, a young
hoy, to he educated at Norfolk Island, and it was at once
understood that a Christian education which shut out belief
and practice of mana, shut him out from succession as a chief.
If this son had settled in his father’s village before the old
man’s death, he would no doubt have succeeded to some of his
property and some of his consideration, but he was absent.
When Mairuru died without an apparent successor, a certain
man attempted to take his place ; he went into the late
chief’s sacred haunt, his tauten, in which he used to have his
intercourse with the rvni, spirits, and he declared that he
heard some one whistle to him there. He told the people
also that afterwards in the night he felt something come
upon his breast, which he took in his hands, and found to be
a stone in shape like the distinguishing part of a valued kind
of pig1: then Mairuru, he said, himself appeared to him and
gave him the mana, the magic chant, with which he was to
work the stone for producing abundance of those pigs. When
he showed the stone the people believed his story; but in the
event nothing came of his mana, and Mairuru had no suc -
cessor. It appears, therefore, that in Lepers’ Island and in
Araga, as elsewhere, the real ground on which the power of
a chief rests is that of belief in the mana he possesses, with
1 In certain breeds of pigs in the Banks’ Islands and New Hebrides, which
are much valued on this account, there occur individual females which simulate
the male sex. These are in the Banks’ Islands raive; they furnish the finest
tusks. Dr. Sliortland has observed that the word rawe has in the Maori of
New Zealand a sense which accounts for its application to these pigs.5S	Chiefs.
which also the wealth he has inherited with it, and all his
success in life, are connected. The power of such a man is
exercised directly over the people of his own village, and if
his reputation for mana spreads abroad, he will have a wide
influence in his island and even beyond it; young men from
other parts, as well as the youths of his village, will come and
live in his gama/i, his fittqe club-house, and will carry out his
orders even to the punishment of death in peace, and iig-ht
for him in war.CHAPTER IV.
PROPERTY AND INHERITANCE.
In the character of property and in the laws of succession
to property, there is hardly any difference to be found in the
Melanesian islands with which we are concerned ; in all it
may be said that property is in land and in personal posses-
sions ; that there is a certain distinction between land which
has been inherited and that which has been reclaimed from
the waste; that there is no strictly communal property in
land; and that with landed and personal property alike, the
original right of succession is with the sister’s children,
except where, besides the very exceptional ease of Saa, there
comes in the succession of children to the property which
their father has acquired for himself.
The land may be considered everywhere to be divided into
three parts: (i) the Town lots; (2) the Garden ground; (3)
the Bush. In Florida, (1) Na Komu, (2) Na Matanga, (3) Na
Leiao ; in Santa Cruz, (1) Matalia, (2) Nabalo, (3) Nabanogaljo ;
in Mota, (1) 0 Yanua, (2) 0 Utag, (3) 0 Mot; in Lepers’
Island, (1) A Vanue, (2) A Labute, (3) A Labute virogi, which
in Araga are (1) Yanua, (2) Lotgae, (3) Ute vono; and these
correspond to the Yavu, the Qele, the Yei/cau of Fiji *. Of
1 Land tenure in Fiji has been described by the Rev. Lorimer Fison in a
Paper printed in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, February,
1881, and briefly as follows : ‘ The tenure of land is distinctly tribal, and the
title is vested in all the full-born members of the tribe. The land is of three
kinds : the yavu or town lot, the qele (rujyele) or arable land, and the veilcau6o
Property and Inheritance.	[ch.
these three divisions of the land, the hush, the uncleared
forest, is not property; nor, as far as I am aware, do the
natives fix any limit up to which they consider the bush
to belong' to the particular district or group of villages in
which they live, although probably they would resent the
felling of trees too near their own grounds. The gardens
and the sites of the villages are all held in property, and
pass by inheritance; so that every part has its owner for
the time, who possesses it as his share of the family property,
but who can by no means alienate it as if it were simply
his own. The chiefs, however powerful in some places they
may be, have no more property in the land or more right
over it in any of the islands than other men ; they often
use their power tyrannically to drive away the owners of
gardens which they covet, and they are very willing to meet
the common European belief that a chief is the owner of
the soil, by taking a price for land which is not theirs to sell;
but the ownership of every piece is remembered and will be
asserted when occasion offers. The remarkable case of the
landless chiefs at Saa (page 50) shews how fixed is the right
of property in land. Before the coming of Europeans the
sale of land was, at least at Saa, not unknown, but was at
any rate uncommon ; of late, especially in the New Hebrides,
much land has been sold to Europeans, some honestly and
cHectively, some by transactions in which the title of the vendor
has been nothing but his willingness to receive somo calico
and guns. In a true sale the consent of all who have an
interest in the property must bo had, and the exact boundary
of each parcel of land defined ; then the value of each piece
and of each fruit-tree has to be1 ascertained, and the claim of
or forest. The veilau is common to nil members of n community, but the^ana
mill the qele are divided and subdivided. Each owner, however, holds for the
household to which lie belongs, the household holds for the clan, the clan for
the tribe, the tribe for the community, and the community for posterity. Each
generation has the usufruct only, and cannot alienate the land. The chiefs
have overridden this rule, but most unjustly.’ This will stand for the
islands west of Fiji, with the important difference made by the absence of
tribes.IV.]
Land and Trees.
61
every single individual discussed and satisfied. A fruit-tree
planted on another’s land, with his consent, remains the pro-
perty of the ]>lanter and of his heirs It is important also to
observe that the property, whether in the villages or in the
gardens, does not lie in large divisions corresponding to the
divisions of the people for marriage purposes into two or more
kins or clans, the kema of Florida., the veto of Mol a, the wai
■rung of Lepers’ Island; hut all are intermixed. It is probable
enough that in the original formation of each settlement the
several divisions of the people worked together to make
their gardens ; as it is, families have formed themselves
within the divisions, the land is held by families, sons work
in their fathers’ gardens who are not their kin ; there cannot
he a family, or married couple, in which two kindreds at least
have not a share.
It is remarkable indeed how precisely alike in the Solomon
Islands, the Banks’ Islands, and the New Hebrides, the
character of property in land reclaimed from the hush asserts
itself to he ; and how the same clfect has been produced of
introducing or strengthening the tendency towards the
succession of the son to 11 is father’s property, in place of the
right of succession through the mother. This will bo shewn,
together with the very general agreement in the whole
character of landed property and succession to it, as the
subject is treated in some detail with examples taken from
the several groups, beginning with Florida in the Solomon
Islands, and passing eastwards through Santa Cruz and the
Banks’ Islands to the New Hebrides.
In Florida the house sites in the komu, like the gardens of
the matanga, arc hereditary property; and, though there do
1 In Fiji, ‘ Fruit-trees are often held by persons who do not own the land ;
but there is a curious distinction here. The property in this case is rather in
the fruit than in the tree, and is therefore not considered to be in the land.
You may take the fruit, but you must not cut down the tree without the
landowner’s permission. A remarkable distinction was made by one of my
Fijian informants. He who has a tree on another man’s land may cut it down
and take it away; his axe does not touch the soil; but lie may not dig the tree
up by the roots, for his digging-stick would turn up the soil.’—liev. L. Fison.62
Property and Inheritance.	[ch.
not appear to be any ancient village sites now occupied, the
old sites are well remembered and their proprietors known.
Members of the various Jcema dwelling intermixed on their
property in the village have their gardens intermixed in the
matanga. It happens naturally, as a village is not inhabited
by a local tribe, that some of the villagers have no property
of their own in the village or in the neighbouring garden
grounds, in which case their neighbours accommodate them
with what they want. The matanga property is never ab-
solutely in the individual but in the Jcema, being looked upon
as having been cleared originally by the Jcema ; portions are
occupied in hereditary succession by families within the Jcema,
by an original agreement which now has come to he a
right. These ancient family lands pass of right to members of
the same Jcema, ordinarily the sister’s children. The whole
matanga near a town is seldom under cultivation at the same
time; some may pass, if the place is deserted, entirely into
bush again, but is never strictly leiao, for its character is
remembered. In the neighbourhood of a prosperous village a
man, and his sons working- with him, will often clear a piece
of bush land and make it matanga. This then passes to his
sons without question, being held to be his own, and so long
as it is clearly remembered how the land was acquired it
passes from father to son; but after a time the character of
the property may be forgotten, and the nephews of a deceased
proprietor will claim it from his sons and be supported by
their Jcema; serious quarrels arise in this way. A chief,
vunagi, differs in no way from another man in his right to
property in Jcomn and matanga 1. If a man plants a cocoa-
nut-tree, an areca palm-tree, or other useful tree on a friend’s
ground, the tree goes to the planter’s son, and if the land-
owner continues friendly will pass on without dispute. A
1 Dikea the chief at Ravu drove away Logana and his family from that place
on the pretext that Logana’s brother-in-law had set fire to his canoe-house, but
really to get possession of Logana’s matanga, which was large and good. The
dispossessed family at Olevuga keep their eyes on the property, waiting for
Dikea’s death to claim it.IV.]
Personal Property.	63
man also can plant in his own matanga fruit-trees expressly
declared to be the property of his sons; at his death the
ground will pass to his nephews, his own kin, hut his sons
will own the trees. Florida people are very reckless however
about destroying fruit-trees.
The succession to personal property in Florida is known to
be originally with the members of the kema, the kin of the
deceased. These will assemble after a death, and if the
deceased be not very rich, will eat up his pigs and his food.
A chief will sometimes take what he likes, but has no right
to do it. A man before his death will direct that his canoe is
to go to his son, and he will receive it; otherwise son and
nephew will each claim, and the stronger will get it. A rich
man’s money is divided among brothers, nephews, and, if they
can get any, his sons, a fruitful source of quarrels ; but a man’s
wife, in prospect of his death, would hide a good deal of his
money, and when the crowd assembled for the division of the
inheritance had dispersed, would bring it out for herself and
her sons. Chiefs used to hide their money and valuable
property and tambu, taboo, the place; now, when the fear of
the tambu is gone, the young people search for these hoards
and take what they find. These Florida customs may he
taken as representing those of the surrounding islands of the
Solomon group. In Saa and its neighbourhood property of
course descends entirely in the patriarchal line. In Santa
Cruz a man’s nephews regularly succeed to his property,
in land, pigs, money and other things ; but the sons also in
some cases succeed. A man there also has property in trees
which are not on his own ground.
In the Banks’ Islands also the town land, the vanna, and
the garden grounds, the utag, are so far private property that
the owner can be found for each piece; the owner being the
one who has for his life the possession of the portion of the
family land which he has inherited ; the lands and houses of
the two veve are intermingled; the succession to the land is
rightly with the sister’s children. Here also the utag is dis-
tinguished into the ancient hereditary cultivated ground, and64
[CH.
Property and Inheritance.
that which has been reclaimed from the mol, the uncleared
forest, by the present owner or his recent jnedecessors. In
the first case the nephews on their mother’s side of the
previous proprietor occupy the ground, each taking the
piece he wishes for his own garden, and all having col-
lectively a property in the whole. The land of the other
character passes to the children of the man who has cleared
the forest from it; his kin have no claim to it. The children
divide it into separate lots, and do not in any nay hold the
property in common; the eldest son will take the oldest
plantation, and the youngest will have the latest which has
not yet borne its crop h Here the patriarchal succession is
fixed; in the other case it is coming in and has a recognized
footing. It is common to make arrangements by which a
man’s children succeed him with the consent of the heirs at
law. For example, when Woser’s father died, who had held
an utag at Motlav in common inheritance with his brother,
Woser gave a pig to his uncle, and he thereupon relinquished
his claim to half the property in the garden ground, which he
did not use. The heir of the deceased, and the heir also in
prospect of the deceased’s brother, was the son of their sister;
and to him Woser gave money to quiet his claim. Upon this
Woser, with his two brothers and two sisters, entered upon the
utag as if they had inherited it; that is, they occupied it by a
common property in the whole and with a particular occu-
pation of separate gardens. If a similar transaction were
to follow upon the death of these present owners, who are not
of their father’s kin, the land would go to their children who
will be not of their kin but of their mother’s; the property
will thus revert to the veve to which it belongs. Sometimes
a man before his death begs his brother not to disturb his son
in his garden ; he agrees, and the son takes his father’s place ;
1 There is no riglit of primogeniture. Daughters inherit of right equally with
sons, but in fact they rather transmit the inheritance to their children. So in
Fiji, ‘Daughters can scarcely be said to inherit land. Land is given with them
at their marriage, but it is not given to them. If they hold it at all it is only
a means of transmitting the land to their children.’—Rev. L. Fison.IV.]
65
Redemption. Trees. Houses.
but the father was there of right, and the son has strictly no
right; he therefore gives money to the natural heirs, his
father’s sister’s children. In order to make a transaction of
this kind secure, the son will put the money for the redemption
of the garden upon his father’s corpse when he is laid out for
burial; the nephews and heirs of the deceased take the money
from their dead maravi in the presence of the assembled people,
and never can deny that they have given up their right If
a man’s children at his death are not rich enough to redeem
the whole utag they redeem a part. It is a part of the
acknowledgment of the right of the sister’s children, and a
part of the satisfaction for it, that fruits and other produce are
allowed them for a time out of the garden ; for these are the
labour of the deceased, whose heirs his nephews and nieces of
his own kin are ; the products of the new owner’s work will
not be claimed. Property in trees is distinct from that in
land, and goes to the planter’s children. In case therefore of
a sale of land there is much variety in the title to the parcels
of ground and in the ownership of the fruit-trees, the know-
ledge of which is most minute and accurate. The exact
limits of each bit of property are known, and the value of the
right to be extinguished is discussed and settled by common
consent2.
The town lots in the vanua, the house sites, tano ima, are held
in the same way. When a young man makes his own home
he builds on the property of his kin, his mother’s or his
maternal uncle’s. It happens naturally that the elder sons
1	A pig has been seen delivered from the hand of a dead man at his funeral,
probably with the same intention.
2	Many years ago I completed the purchase of a piece of ground for a school
at Navqoe in Mota, and found the rights, and the limits and value of the rights,
of every man and woman concerned acknowledged and defined in a surprising
manner. Each parcel of the land was known by boundaries drawn from tree
to tree. The year before the purchase of another piece of ground for a similar
purpose had been supposed to be completed, but when payment was being made
at Navqoe the owner of a fruit-tree on the other ground put in his claim, which
he had before omitted to make. He was accompanied by the owner of the
ground on which the tree stood, who testified that the claim was good, for the
claimant’s grandfather had planted it.
F66	Property and Inheritance.	[ch.
have left their father’s house on marriage before his death, or
do so successively after his death; the youngest son then
remains with his mother and keeps the house. In a village
which is flourishing a new house is built on an old site,
which therefore rises in time into something of a mound ; hut
villages are seldom permanent. When a new village is begun
it may occupy an ancient site of late unused, in which case
the property in the town lots is well remembered, or it may
he a new occupation of ground for building. The vanua at
Losalav in Motlav has been formed round a house built by the
great-uncle of Woser, who gave two rawe pigs to the owner
of the utag for the ground, and thus became the landlord;
his daughter afterwards, though she received nothing in the
way of rent, was treated with respect by the householders
because they were not on property of their own.
Personal property—the pigs which are so much valued, the
money, canoes, ornaments, weapons, and the various imple-
ments used in native life—goes to the children generally; but
the right of the sister’s children is still maintained. When a
man dies his brothers and kinsmen, sogoi, will come and carry
off his pigs unless the children buy them off; hut if a man
before his death makes a sort of testament, vatavata varvanianau,
declaring that he gives his property to his children and
distributing it, they will not be disturbed in their inheritance.
A great man often buried quantities of money, which was
never found. In Lakona, part of Santa Maria, ‘a man will
hide some of his money; then if he have a good son who helps
him well in his garden or always gives him food, the father
will make his hoard known to him, that it may be his ; if not
it is gone for ever.’ In that place a man’s money at his death
is carefully distributed in short lengths among his children
and his kinsmen, and his pigs are distributed in the same
way; the children give money and pigs to the kinsmen that
they may keep his personal belongings, and his land and fruit-
trees, which are then completely given up. In the case of the
death of a native in some place in which he has settled as
a stranger, or where he has been on a visit, his kinsmen, andIV.]
New Hebrides.
6 7
especially his sister’s son, have a right to go and take what he
may have left behind him ; but this is generally compounded
for by a sum of money, tulag, after receiving which no further
claim can be made. There is no doubt very often in such a
case a suspicion or accusation of poisoning or witchcraft as the
cause of death, for which compensation is demanded1.
In the New Hebrides the ancient succession of the sister’s
son to his uncle’s property appears to be strongly maintained
in Araga, Pentecost Island, where the nephew succeeds to the
house, the garden, and the pigs of his uncle, and the son takes
nothing except what his father has given him in his lifetime ;
and even if a man makes a garden for himself out of the bush
it must go to his sister’s son. It is very different, however, in
Lepers’ Island, where the right of the sister’s son seems to be
barely recognized, and the property in the villages and in the
gardens is held by individuals as their own, not as belonging
to the waivung. The town lots are fenced round, so that the
houses stand in enclosures. A man’s son succeeds to his house
property, hut will not live in the house so long as his mother
and sisters are there, on account of those restrictions upon
intercourse which have been already mentioned. Houses are
renewed in the same place, but not always on the same site,
and villages are often shifted, the pnrperty in the ground
being borne in mind. A man’s garden-ground, labute, goes to
his sons, who arrange the division of it among themselves,
unless their father has expressed his will about it before his
death. Women do not succeed to land, but have a right to a
share in the produce of their father’s gardens, which indeed
their brothers are considered to hold partly for them. A man
can make himself a new garden out of the unappropriated
ground fit for gardens, the labute virogi,—loose, not tied up,—
1 For example, Wete’s son had gone over from Merlav to Merig, and there he
died, having been charmed by means of a fragment of his food at the instigation
of a man whose wife is Wete’s sister. So on the return of the party, when the
cause of death comes out, Wete shoots his sister with his gun, because her
husband had been the cause of the death of his son. The whole transaction is
looked upon as a matter of course (the woman not being much hurt) ; Wete is
on the best of terms with his neighbours and relations.68
Property and Inheritance.
and there cannot he any difference between this and his here-
ditary property. Gardens are all fenced. Fruit-trees planted on
another man’s land remain the property of the planter and his
heirs. It is in the succession to a man’s personal property
that the rights of kinship assert themselves. On a man’s
death his sons distribute his pigs, money, and other possessions,
among those of his waivung, a choice pig and a larger share of
other things being given to the sister’s son, because his special
relationship is much regarded. A man, however, will make
his will, expressing his wishes as to the disposition of his
property before his death. The succession to property is a
fruitful source of quarrels, and it is natural that opportunity
should prevail over acknowledged right when the heirs are out
of the way.
There appears upon the whole a remarkable tendency
throughout these islands of Melanesia towards the substitution
of a man's own children for his sister’s children, and others of
his kin, in succession to his property; and this appears to
begin where the property is the produce of the man’s own
industry, with the assistance in most cases of his sons, as in
gardens newly cleared from the forest, in his money, his pigs,
and his canoes. The original right of a man’s own kin, and
especially his sister’s sons, to be his heirs not only to the
hereditary lands which have come down in the kin but to
personal property, is yet strongly maintained, even at Lepers’
Island, where the advance towards the patriarchal system has
been so considerable. It is probable that even at Saa some-
thing still survives of what must have been the original custom
of the ancestors of that people, as well as of the rest of the
Melanesians. It is evident that the newer form of succession
depends upon the assertion of paternity; and as it arises some-
times on the occupation of new ground, it may be thought to
be strengthened by the formation of new settlements after the
family has established itself within the kin.CHAPTER V.
SECRET SOCIETIES AND MYSTERIES.
There is certainly nothing' more characteristic of Melane-
sian life than the presence of Societies which celebrate
Mysteries strictly concealed from the uninitiated and from all
females. A dress, with a mask or hat, disguises the members
if they appear in open day; they have strange cries and
sounds by which they make their presence known when
they are unseen. In some cases, as in Florida and Aurora,
they make a public show of a piece of the handiwork of the
ghosts with whom it is pretended that they have been as-
sociating. Such societies are the Dukduk of New Britain
described by Mr. Brown and Mr. Romilly, the Matambala of
Florida, the Tarnate of the Banks’ Islands, the Qatar of the
Northern New Hebrides. A photograph from New Caledonia
shews a figure which can hardly lie distinguished from that
of a tamate from the Banks’ Islands, and Mr. Romilly mentions
an institution like the Dukduk in New Guinea. It is plain,
therefore, that this institution extends very widely through
Melanesia, and the Nanga of Fiji, though in some respects
different, cannot be thought to be entirely distinct from it;
yet it is remarkable that nothing of the sort has as yet been
found in Santa Cruz, or in the Solomon Islands east of
Florida h
1 Of the two large islands of Guadalcanar and Malanta, only a very small
part has come under observation. The Santa Cruz people do not seem to be
closely connected with the Solomon islanders. When it is remembered that the70
[CH.
Secret Societies and Mysteries.
The Florida mysteries were believed to bave been brought
from Ysabel, where nothing of the kind has as yet been
observed. This belief, how-
ever, serves to point to a
connexion with the Dukduk
of New Britain, in the name
of which a further connexion
may probably be found. In
all these societies the ghosts
of the dead were supposed
to be present; in the Banks’
Islands their name is ‘The
Ghosts; ’ in Santa Cruz a
ghost is duka; in Florida
one method of consulting
the ghosts of the dead is
paluduka. It is very likely
therefore that in New
Britain the Dukduk are also
‘ The Ghosts.’
One very important point
of difference separates these
New Caledonia Masker.	from the bora of Australia,
in which the grown youth
of the tribe are ‘ made young men,’ and have imparted to
them some knowledge of the religious beliefs and practices
of the elders. Grown men and infants, married and un-
married, are equally admitted to the societies of Florida
and the New Hebrides ; and if in the Banks’ Islands it
is not customary to admit boys very young, there is cer-
tainly no limit of age as regards admission. It is no
doubt the case that where these societies flourish, a youth
who has not become a member of one of them does not
take a position of full social equality with the young men
Nanga appears to be limited to a part only of Viti Levu in Fiji, and for a long
time escaped notice there, it is reasonable to look fur the discovery of many
secret societies in Melanesia which have not yet been observed.v.]	Absence of Religious Character.	71
who are members; and also that snoh a young man has
probably no wife. Such a young man has not been able to
meet the expense of initiation or of matrimony; his friends,
from carelessness or poverty, have let him grow up without
making proper provision for him; he remains uninitiated and
unmarried from the same cause ; hut initiation is by no means
a preliminary step to matrimony. It is difficult, in view of
the strict secrecy and solemnity of the mysteries, to believe
that there is no knowledge imparted in initiation of a religious
character. The outer world of women and children, and the
uninitiated, viatatvonoivono,—whose eyes were closed,—undoubt-
edly believed that the initiated entered into association with
the ghosts of the dead ; the strange cries and awful sounds
that proceeded from the sacred and unapproachable lodge of
the association, or from the forest when the members of it
were abroad, were more than human in their ears; the figures
that appeared were not those of men. An accident would no
doubt sometimes make it plain that it was a man, some one
well known and recognized, who was figuring as a ghost ;
but then his disguise was not the work of mortal hands ; and
the shrewd conjecture that all the rest were as much men and
neighbours as the one whose fall revealed him might be
entertained, but would be dangerous to express. It was only
when the neophyte was admitted into the mysterious pre-
cincts that he found only his daily companions there, and
learnt that there was nothing to be imparted to him except
the knowledge how the sounds were produced, how the
dresses and decorations were made, and in some cases a song
and dance. There was no secret article of belief made known,
and no secret form of worship practised. The ordinary forms
of prayer and sacrifice were performed as elsewhere, though
here in connexion with these mysteries. There were no forms
of worship peculiar to the society, and no objects of worship
of a kind unknown to those without.
-It is remarkable also that, as far as I have been able to
ascertain, there is nothing1 or very little that is obscene, or
more objectionable from a moral point of view than imposture72	Secret Societies and Mysteries.	[ch.
combined with a certain amount of tyranny and intimidation.
In some places the neophytes had to endure hardships or even
tortures, which were absent, however, in the Banks’ Islands,
nil ere these societies are very numerous. The property of
the uninitiated was plundered, and themselves beaten and
oppressed when the mysteries were at work ; all order and
industry -were upset. At the same time hideous and obscene
orgies were absent; a native convert to Christianity might go
into his lodge and find nothing there to offend him that he
did not find in the village; an European visitor might go in
and find nothing more mysterious to be revealed to him than
the hats and dresses and the appliances for producing the
unearthly sounds.
The Fijian nanga as described by Mr. Fison and Mr. Joske,
to which the presence of women gives at once a different
character, must be taken as representing these secret societies
in that group, and it is reasonable to suppose direct connexion
in origin between this and those that flourish in the islands
further to the west. The institution in Fiji, however, is so
little conspicuous in the life of the people, probably because so
limited in distribution, that it escaped for many years the
observation of Mr. Fison himself. In the Banks’ Islands
the tamale would very soon call for notice. If no special
celebration of the mysteries were being carried on, a visitor
would soon become aware that there were near every village
retreats frecpiented by most of his native companions, and
unapproachable by some. The members of the societies wTould
be proud to shew him these retreats and the wonderful works
of art they contained. Very few7 days would pass w’ithout the
appearance of some masked figures, or the sound of some
strange noise or cry. In that group the number of these
societies is surprising; some very insignificant, local, or
recently started by individuals ; some select and respected;
one found everywhere, the principal and apparently original
institution of the kind. In the Northern New Hebrides
this Great Tamate of the Banks’ Islands is not found, but
others of the same character appear. I have seen a mask andv.'J
Extent and Distribution.
73
a secret lodge as far south as Ambrym. The figure in the
photograph from New Caledonia is so nearly identical with
that of a tamate of the Banks’ Islands, that the identity of the
institution may be conjectured, or at any rate a connexion
Banks’ Islands Tajiate.
must be taken to exist. Between the Banks’ Islands and
Florida the interval is considerable ; but scholars from Florida,
on their way to Norfolk Island many years ago, recognized
their own watahala in the salagoro of Mota, to which as
strangers they were freely admitted. The result of their
admission was fatal to the mystery in either institution. A
Florida boy who had seen what the Mota salagoro was and
contained, knew very well what sort of mj'steries those were at
home into which he had not yet been initiated, and he ceased74
[CH.
Secret Societies and Mysteries.
to believe in. their supernatural character. The uninitiated
bovs from the Banks’ Islands heard in Norfolk Island from
their Florida schoolfellows what they had seen, and the
sacredness of the salagoro was lost for them. The secret was
out many years ago, though in Florida the power of the
mvsteries was maintained till Christianity prevailed in the
only part of the island in which the institution had a seat.
In the Banks’ Islands the tamate has survived the introduction
of Christianity. All belief in the supernatural character of
the associations has long disappeared, all women and children
know that the tamate are men dressed in disguises made by
themselves, and that the sounds and cries are naturally
produced. But these societies had so important a place in the
social arrangements of the people that they have held their
ground as clubs. It is not only in the Banks’ Islands that
secrecy and a costume have their attractions. The secrecy of
the lodges is still maintained, the salagoro is unapproachable
by women and the uninitiated, the neophyte has still to go
through his time of probation and seclusion, and the authority
of the society is maintained by too much of the high-handed
tyranny of old times’. In truth, the social power of these
societies was too great to lie readily dissolved, and in the
1 It was a matter of principle with Bishop Patteson not to interfere
in an arbitrary manner with the institutions of the people, but to leave
it to their own sense of right and wrong, and their own knowledge of
the character of what they did, to condemn or to tolerate what their growing
enlightenment would call into question. So there arose among his early pupils
the doubt whether it would be right for them as Christians to continue members
of the tamate societies, to seek for admission into them, and frequent their
lodges. The bishop put it to them that they should enquire and consult among
themselves about the real character of the societies ; did they offer worship and
prayer to ghosts or spirits ; were they required to take part in anything indecent
or atrocious ; did membership involve any profession of belief or practice of
superstition peculiar to the members ? After consultation they reported to him
that they could not discover anything wrong in itself, except the pretence of
association with ghosts, which had already ceased to be serious, and the beating
and robbing of the uninitiated, which it was quite possible for them to refuse
to take part in and to oppose. The bishop therefore would not condemn the
societies, and in the Banks’ Islands they continue to exist, and indeed to
flourish more than it is at all desirable that they should.Banks' Islands.
75
V.]
absence of any strong1 political organization the importance of
the position of a member of the largest and most exclusive of
the societies has been considerable. Many years ago I well
remember how in the early morning of one clay in the island of
Mota a strange cry was heard repeated from every quarter,
shrill, prolonged and unmistakeable. It was the cry of the
tamate; the members of the Great Tamale were all out and in
possession of the island; o vanua we goua, the country was in
occupation, no one could go about, everything of the business
of ordinary life was at a standstill till the tamale should be
satisfied. Upon enquiry we were told that in the evening
before a man in anger had taken up his bow. In accordance
with the teaching of Bishop Patteson, and with the authority
of the great man of the island, the society of the Great Tamate
had forbidden the use of the bow and arrow in private quarrels
under penalty of a fine to them. On this occasion the man
who had been guilty of the offence hastened to atone for it
with a pig, and all was quiet again. It is not surprising that
membership in so powerful a society should be valued and not
readily resigned.
I. The Banks' Islands.—The Banks’ Islands, with the
neighbouring Torres group, are undoubtedly the chief seat of
these societies, which are there universally called ‘The Ghosts,’
o tamate, netmet. In the Torres Islands alone there are a
hundred of them, and every man belongs to four or five. The
chief society, the tamate Uwoa of Mota, is present everywhere,
though in some places it is not so important as some more
exclusive one of local origin. Another association is distin-
guished by its peculiar dance, and differs from the others in
having no permanent lodge or club-house; this, the Qaf,
is found in all the Banks’ Islands, but not in the Torres
Islands. All these tamate associations have as their particular
badge a leaf or a flower. The very numerous and well-marked
varieties of the croton, which all have their native names,
furnish the leaves; the flowers are those of the many varieties
of hibiscus, all also named. To stick flowers in the hair, rou,
is very common ; it is the particular part of the head which is?6
Secret Societies and Mysteries.	[ch.
ornamented by the particular flower that marks the member
of the tamale. To assume the badge without being a member
of a tamale is an offence against the society, to be punished
according to the power and position of the society offended.
In the Torres Islands, for example, one of the three great
tamale societies is Nijnr, and its badge is a hibiscus flower worn
over the forehead. If any one not a member should be seen
with this flower thus worn, a bunch of flowers and leaves
is set up in a public place by the society, and the offender
knows that he must forfeit a pig. He brings his pig, ties it
in the open space in the middle of his village, and stands by
it; one of the societj' then beats him for his presumption, and
after that he has to go through the regular initiation with the
payment of the entrance fees.
The origin of these societies in the Banks’ Islands has no
light thrown upon it, as in Florida, by tradition, and must be
presumed therefore to belong to no recent times. There is a
story that a woman received from a ghost, whom she saw in a
tree, an image with the hat and cloak of a tamale, and that
she kept this hidden behind a partition in her house. It
became known that she had something wonderful concealed,
and she admitted men on payment to a private view. When
those who had partaken of the secret became numerous enough
they took it out of the woman’s hands, made a lodge for
themselves, were taught by the image, which was all the
while itself a ghost, how to make the dress, and thus set up
the first tamale association, with the strictest exclusion of
all women ever afterwards. From this story nothing can be
learnt concerning the origin of so widely spread an institution.
The multitude of minor associations, generally named after
birds, are however mostly local, and may be thought to be
modern. Any one might start a new society, and gather round
him his co-founders, taking any object that might strike their
fancy as the ground and symbol of their association. A
visitor to Norfolk Island having seen there a bird that was
strange to him, established on his return to Mota a society
called ‘ the Norfolk Island Bird.’ Some such new foundations77
v.]	Banks' Islands. Lodges.
will succeed and flourish, some will fail; but the whole number
in the Banks’ Islands and the Torres Islands must he very
great. Three or four may he common to all the group, some
few common to two or more islands, the rest more or less
closely localized. Some are exclusive with heavy entrance
payments, and are used by elder men of good position; some
are cheap and easy of entrance. I think it probable that
where the Great Tamate is powerful, all the members of the
other societies belong also to that and work together with it,
except the younger members of the least important, the
seclusion of which is comparatively little respected.
The lodge or secret resort of the Great Tamate is the salagoro,
established in some secluded place, generally amidst lofty trees,
in the neighbourhood of every considerable village or group of
villages. The path to it is marked where it diverges from the
public path by bright orange-coloured fruits stuck on reeds,
bunches of flowers, fronds of cycas, and the customary soloi,
taboo marks, forbidding entrance. These are repeated at
intervals till the wdnding path comes out into the open space
in w’hieh the building stands. Such marks are quite sufficient,
to prevent intrusion, because they represent the whole force of
the association, not because they rest on any specially religious
sanction. The whole place is not sacred, ron.go, it is set apart,
tapu, by a sufficient authority. No woman or uninitiated
person would think of approaching; foreigners are admitted
without difficulty; that is to say, those wdio do not belong to
those neighbouring islands in which the society is known to
have a place, Solomon islanders for example. If nothing in the
way of initiation or particular celebration should be going on,
the visitor will find only a few members in the place; some who
use it as a club for their meals, some whose business it is as
newly-admitted members to prepare the meals, keep the place
swept, and remain within for a fixed number of days. Very
likely a cocoa-nut will be pointed out as representing some one
whose personal attendance has been excused. The hats and
dresses worn at the last dance or public demonstration may be
inspected. The hats are really ingenious, and when new are7tt	Son'/ Societies and Mysteries.	[cm.
handsome. They are mu,(lc of Lark, painted with such
vegetable preparations ns it is a Hecrot of tho fraternity to
compound, anil adorned in hands and in ring's round the eyes
on either side with the scarlet Heeds of the ahrax preealorim.
The hats receive tho whole head, and come down upon tho
'J’amatk, Vai.ijwa, I’.ankh’ Ihi.anijh.
shoulders, wlicre they meet the cloak with a, fringe of cveas
leaves. Tho shape of the hats is very various ; some have a
strange resemblance to the cocked hats of naval officers, and
it lias been naturally supposed that the pattern has been taken
from them, lint it is very unlikely that a naval officer hasBanks' Islands. Hats.
79
v0
ever been seen in a cocked hat- in the Banks’ Islands, and the
masks of that shape were certainly seen when masks were first
seen there by Europeans Besides these hats the house of
Banks’ Islands Tamate.
the scdagoro will not be found to contain anything more than
the usual appliances for cooking: a certain disappointment is
probably experienced by every one who first penetrates into
the mysterious precincts. There is one object, however, which
1 It is true that when white men were seen with hats they were supposed by
the natives to wear what corresponded to their own masks. The native name for8o
[CH.
Secret Societies and Mysteries.
is not, or but lately was not, so readily made known. This is
the apparatus by which the peculiar, and certainly very
impressive, sound is made, which was believed by the outsiders
to be the cry or voice of the ghosts. This is a flat, smooth stone,
on which the butt-end of the stalk of a fan of palm is rubbed.
The vibration of the fan produces an extraordinary sound,
which can be modulated in strength and tone at the will of
the performer, and which proceeding in the stillness of day-
break from the mysterious recesses of the salagoro, may well
have carried with it the assurance of a supernatural presence
and power. The origin of this contrivance is thus narrated.
Two members of the Great Tamale in Vanua Lava going
together along the shore heard a strange and unearthly sound
as they approached a point of land, the usual haunt of ghosts.
They found this to be produced by an old woman sitting on
the beach and rubbing down shells for money upon a stone,
who was contriving to do her work and at the same time
shelter herself from the sun, by using the handle of her
palmleaf umbrella for the stick which holds the shell. The
men perceived the value of the discovery for the purpose
of their mysteries, ran in upon the woman and killed her,
and carried off the stone and her umbrella. This apparatus
does the work which the ‘ bull-roarer,’ too well known in
the Banks’ Islands to be used in mysteries, performs else-
where.
To obtain admission into any of these societies is to tiro.
Before admission can be obtained to the Great Tamale, the
candidate or his friends has to mur with a pig of the valued
kind called raive ; and there is also a period of fasting to be
gone through. When he is admitted he is brought into the
salagoro, and deposits money at the successive stages of his
advance, marked by the soloi beside the path till he comes
a mask worn in one of these societies is the same as that given to the society
itself, tamale, a ghost; and tamate has long been established as the name of
any European hat or cap. Hence it is natural rather to speak of these disguises
as hats than as masks, and useful perhaps to do so, to distinguish them from the
masks to cover the face which are in use elsewhere.Banks Island ‘Tamate!
81
v.]
into the house. He has then to goto, remain secluded, so many
days before he can go back into his village, and after that
has to serve so many days more in the preparation of the
daily oven. The number of days of seclusion and of at-
tendance, and the amount of the admission fees, vary with
the dignity of the societyl. In Ureparapara, where the
Great Tamate is not of much importance, there are three chief
societies, Ni Pir, No Tov, Ne Menmendol, into which the ad-
mission is difficult; the new member has to goto for a hundred
1 Mr. Palmer thus describes the initiation of children at Pek in Yanua
Lava. ‘ A number of children were about to enter the Salagoro, which was the
cause of the gathering. We passed through a tall screen of cocoa-nut leaves
some twenty feet high, made so as to hide the precincts of the Salagoro from
the uninitiated. In the courtyard of the village there was a group of children,
some babies earned in their fathers’ arms, all boys ; these were the candidates
for admission into the Salagoro. We waited for a short time, when some one
gave a signal, and one of the men gave along, loud cry with all the strength of
his lungs, and then came rushing from a path inland a curious figure I had
seen dressing up for the occasion. This was the tamate tvasawasa (the harmless
ghost) who was to conduct the children into the Salagoro. He came along with
a light, springy step, with two white rods in his hands, which he danced up
and down. All you saw of the man were his two legs. On his head was
a curious kind of hat or tamate; it is a mask with holes or slits in it,
through which he saw; long fringes made of cocoa-nut leaves blanched
covered his body entirely, and formed a kind of Inverness cape, through which
his hands protruded. A singular effect is given to the figure by the peculiar
high trotting action with which he rushes about, his leafy coat flying about him
with a rustling noise. He came leaping into the tinesara over a stone wall
with a springy bound, and danced round and round the group in the middle;
and then all at once with a shout rushed into the midst of them, and beat his
two white wands together till they were broken to shreds over the heads of
the group. One little fellow got frightened and rushed away, but he soon was
brought back again. Then the tamate retired into the enclosure, and the group
filed off in a procession round the tinesara, where a number of pigs were tied
to stakes. The pigs got a smack from each child ; then they all went in single
file into the tall enclosure. As we watched them, the same little fellow who
was frightened before rushed back out of the screen, and after hiding himself
for a moment jumped up and rushed away into the bush, amidst a roar of
laughter. I heard afterwards that he ran away home, a distance of some five
or six miles. This was only the preliminary ceremony. These children will
have to remain in the enclosure forty or fifty days, till all the money and
pigs are paid for the privilege of belonging to this club.’—Island Voyage,
1879.
G82
Secret Societies and Mysteries.	[ch.
days, and after that to attend to the oven for another hundred
days. During his first hundred days he does not wash, and
gets so dirty that when he comes out he is not recognized;
so dirty is he, they say, that he cannot be seen. In this
island the Great Tamate, though it retains the name, has not
even a salagoro; a chamber for initiation is made in the
gamut, the house of the Suqe Club ; the entrance payment
is small, and infants are admitted. In the Banks’ Islands
also the lesser societies have no salagoro, whether they be
exclusive like the Ov'wvi or insignificant like the Meretang;
the lodge is the sara. From all the lodges equally women,
and the uninitiated, the matawonoioono who have their eyes
closed, are strictly excluded. Women will venture to stand
near the entrance to the retreats of the lesser clubs, which
are often very little secluded from the public road; hut
the salagoro of the Great Tamate and the sara of the im-
portant societies are very carefully respected. The croton
leaves which are the badge of each are well known; a
member of any one will mark with such a leaf the fruit-
trees or garden that he wishes to reserve for a particular
use, and the prohibition will be observed ; he has behind
him the whole tamate\ with whom an offender would have
to deal.
For the greater part of the year the salagoro or the sara is
used as a kind of club ; the newly admitted members have the
duty of preparing a daily meal, which attracts some who have
no other engagement; it affords a convenient and somewhat
distinguished resort in the heat of the day. The European
visitor will he likely to find there any man he wishes to see;
he will find a meal there himself when he desires it; a yam
from the salagoro oven will he sent to him as a compliment,
of which no one will venture to partake whose eyes are still
unopened. From time to time the members rouse themselves
1 Order is kept in the same way among themselves. If any one has made
a disturbance in the salagoro, a maJcomako, bunch of leaves, is set out, and
the culprit has to put money upon it, to tape goro o makomalco, make his
atonement.V-]
Banks Island ‘ Tamate
83
into activity, with a view to bring themselves into evidence,
to attract recruits, to impress the people with a sense of their
importance, and to enjoy a festival. Then they begin to make
new masks and dresses within their lodge, and the solemn
sound of the linge tamate warns all without that the mysteries
have begun. The country is said to be close, 0 vanua we gona,
no one can venture along the paths without the risk of being
beaten by the tamate. They assume the greatest license in
carrying off all they want, robbing gardens and stripping
fruit-trees for their feast, and then any one will suffer who
has spoken or acted without due respect to the society. The
ghosts in their disguise will rush into the villages, chasing the
terrified women and children, and heating any whom they can
catch ; the disadvantage of remaining outside as matawonowono
is made apparent h Many of the lesser societies, composed of
those who are members also of the Great Tamate, w'hose power
is at their back, practise the same tyranny, hut there are
some that do not terrify or beat, hut come out to show their
finery and dance. A pretty and pleasant scene it is when two
or three figures dance forth into the sunshine of the village
place; their heads concealed in masks in shape like the cowls
of Italian becchini, coming down in a point upon the breast,
and with round eyes painted on the sides, white, and glisten-
ing with scarlet seeds and the fresh green of the cycas fronds;
their bodies hidden in golden brown cloaks of sago leaves ;
1 The smaller societies make their appearance with less pretence. ‘ On my
way home I met a wild and grotesque-looking party of men ; they belonged to
a tamate society, and they had been to pull a house to pieces in order to compel
the owner, or his son perhaps, to join them. They were adorned with hibiscus
flowers and croton leaves, their faces smudged with charcoal, and a leaf in the
mouth, each carrying a stick. Two or three of these had on a tamate, a hat and
mask, with a long fringe of leaves reaching down to the heels.’ ‘At this time
of the year, when they are baking bread-fruit, some of the young men dress up
in a mask and put on a dress of dried banana leaves, tied round the neck and
reaching to the ground, and they dance along with a rustling noise from the dry
leaves. They either talk gibberish or else in one of the neighbouring dialects.
The women and children are supposed to be frightened of them, but they often
give them their dried bread-fruit.’ These are the Qasa.—Rev. J. Palmer’s
Journals, Island Voyage, 1877, 1883.
G 284	Secret Societies and Mysteries.	[ch.
each holding in either hand a cycas frond as a martyr in a
picture holds his palm. The women and the little children
crowd around full of admiration mixed with awe; ‘ these are
good tamate, they never beat or chase us.’ In Ureparapara it
is not the custom to heat the outsiders, but they are not
slack in insisting on their rules. When an initiation into
their menmendol is going on there must be no smoke of fire ;
if smoke is seen anywhere, their sagilo, a bunch of their
flowers and leaves, is set up, and a pig must be given for the
offence.
In the part of the New Hebrides which closely adjoins the
Banks’ Islands these tamate societies are not so common as in
those islands; but there are in Aurora, Araga (Pentecost
Island), and Ambrym, mysterious associations which have a
retreat unapproachable by the uninitiated, and a mask and
dress. In the southern parts of Araga there is said to be what
is called a tamate, but information fails concerning it; in
Ambrym I have been taken into a secret place and shown a
mask fashioned upon a skull and furnished with a wig of hair,
and moreover decorated with the tusks of a boar. At any
rate the Araga tamate is different from the Qeta to be hereafter
described.
Different from these tamate societies in the Banks’ Islands
in having no permanent place of resort, and yet closely resem-
bling them in all the most important characteristics, is the
institution of the Qat, common to all the group. The great
distinction of this, however, is the dance. The tamate will
prepare and execute most elaborate performances of the dances
of their islands, but the Qat itself is danced. For the initia-
tion, whenever a sufficient number of candidates are forth-
coming, an enclosure in a retired place is made by a fence of
reeds, the two ends of which overlap to make an entrance, the
shark’s mouth as it is called, through which it is impossible
to look. Here the neophytes remain, unwashed and blackened
with ashes, for an appointed time, learning the dance and the
song by which the steps of the dance are regulated. To
obtain admission is, as with the tamate, to tiro, and moneyv.]	Banks Island ‘Qatul	85
has to be paid ; children too young to dance have the money
paid for them and enter; when they are big enough they go
in again to learn the dance. Nothing can better represent to
a visitor the scene of an initiation into religious mysteries than
the jealously guarded enclosure from which in the dead of
night strange sounds and loud calls proceed, and the name of
which associates it with Qat, who may be taken for the god
whom they worship h But the name Qat refers to the hats
and not to the vui; and enquiry does not discover any
religious meaning in the initiation. The neophytes learn a
dance difficult of execution and requiring much practice, not
because of a complicated figure, but from the rapidity and
accuracy with which the steps are stamped. The steps, as in
other dances, follow a song, and the tapping of a bamboo.
The Mota song is as follows: Teve ! la us mae, ua ven toa, to
salsal, to salsal, Vevae, la us mae, na ven toa ; 1 Mother! bring
a bow hither, that I may shoot a fowl, a flying fowl; Mother,
bring a bow hither, that I may shoot a fowl.’ The same with
slight verbal change is what is used in Santa Maria, and no
doubt in the other islands also. As they dance this song is
silently followed, or sung in a low voice. There are other
songs learnt and sung in the nin which are not known to the
uninitiated : I have one from Gaua in Santa Maria, beginning
‘ Oh! make the fire and blow it into flame, we will finish
covering in our oven,’ and having nothing in it which might
not be found in other songs. It may perhaps be thought that
the simple words of the song with which the Qat is danced veil
some mysterious meaning; the initiated declare that it does
not. When the appointed time is come the newly instructed
dancers and the initiated come forth with lofty hats upon
their heads. These hats, in which the Qat was no doubt
originally danced, answer to the masks of the tamate, but are
1 Thus Bishop Patteson described his first acquaintance with the Qatu at
Mota. On that occasion a small boy was detected looking into the enclosure
from a tree into which he had climbed; he was seized and taken inside; by
wTay of punishment he was covered with the leaves of the Jcalato nettle-tree
and he was compelled to join the neophytes.86	Secret Societies and Mysteries.	[ch.
high and pointed, resting on the shoulders; they are now so
tall that they require guy ropes on either side to support
them, and it is impossible to wear them and dance. The Qat
dance is wonderful indeed. The open space in the middle of
a village on a moonlight night is lined with the spectators;
the loud report of bursting bladders is heard from the wood
around ; one after another the performers, with a surprisingly
rapid stamping motion of the feet, enter upon the ground, and
come to an equally surprising sudden halt; the leader carries
a length of bamboo made into a drum, with which he directs
and controls the dance ; the rest carry in their hands their
bows. When the dancers are numerous and expert the weight
and accuracy with which they beat the ground is wonderful;
the island seems to shake beneath their feet. In Santa Maria,
whether at Gaua or at Lakona, the Qat is more elaborate
and difficult than in Mota or Motalava ; boys at Norfolk
Island will never undertake it. A practice of three or four
months is needed for this before newly-initiated performers
can venture to come out and dance. In former times, when
the newly-taught dancers made their first appearance, the old
members past their dancing days from far and near would
gather round with their bows in their hands and jealously
watch the steps; if they saw an error they would shoot;
and if any one were hit the blame was laid on the faulty
dancer ; there was no quarrel with the shooter and no com-
pensation to be made.
II. The New Hebrides. In the Northern New Hebrides the
Qatu, with other institutions of the same kind, has its place
in Maewo, Omba, and Araga. In Omba, Lepers’ Island, I know
no more than that there is a Qatu, the hats for which are made
in the shape of a shark ; from the other two islands information
is abundant. In Maewo, Aurora, there is more than one Qatu,
but one, the Qatu lata, is the chief. In all these there is
initiation with trial of endurance by torments and hardships,
but there is no secret imparted beyond the knowledge of the
song and dance and the making of the decorations. For the
initiation an enclosure is made with reeds near a group ofNew Hebrides ‘Qatu.'
87
V-]
villages ; into these the neophytes are gathered, and here
they remain unwashed and with very little food and water
till the appointed time has expired, which may he thirty
days. During this time they learn a dance, and songs, hut
they do not, as in the Banks’ Islands, follow a song as they
dance. Little hoys are not initiated, because they could not
endure the hardships and tortures to he gone through; but
they can enter by proxy; a man already initiated will go
through a formal initiation for them. There is no limit of
age, no period of life to which initiation is more appropriate
than another ; it is a matter of payment, of giving pigs, which
a wealthy man will give for his son or brother ; an infant and
a grown-up man are equally admitted. The mark of a member
of the Qatu is the flower of the nalnal, a scitamineous plant,
which no outsider is allowed to wear. Those who enter these
societies assume a new name, which however does not, as in
the neighbouring island, supersede the old one. They become
Tari, or Vula ; the young men, Tileg and Gao, though com-
monly so called, are Tari-koli and Vula-ngoda in the Qatu.
While the initiation is going on, if women assemble, as they
do, to hear the singing in the enclosure where the neophytes
are being taught, it is an allowed custom for men to carry
them off and ravish them. For a woman to see the newly
initiated until they have returned to ordinary life is a mortal
offence. They come out black with dirt and soot, and are not
to he seen till they have washed. Not long ago a girl from
the Ufa, inland, saw by accident this washing. She fled to
Tunoriki, where the Mission school is, for refuge, but they
could not protect her. The Uta people sent for her and she
went, knowing that she could not fail to die, and they buried
her, unresisting, alive.
The great secret of the society is the making of the Qatu,
from which the name is taken, and which corresponds to the
qatu hats of the Banks’ Islands, being in fact itself a hat or
mask. It is made of tree-fern trunks ; a pointed upright
part, large enough for a man to get within and carry it, and a
cross-piece pointed at the ends. This cross is daubed with thess
Scar/ Societies and Mysteries
[CH.
white grated root of cnladium, and painted with pigments only-
known within the society. The pointed top is adorned with a
tuft of dracaena leaves ; the ends are connected and kept firm
by sticks ornamented with sago-palm frond lets; two largo
eyes are painted on the front; the hack is covered with the
hairy plexus from the sago fronds. When completed, and the
day appointed comes, a man within it carries this forth with
three other men supporting it; in old days if was believed by
outsiders to be the work of ghosts. The correspondence
between this and the timlato work of the Florida Matambala
is as remarkable as it is complete.
An account of his initiation into the chief Qat/i, that called
Qafn ta Gvbio, was written for me by a native yout h while his
memory was fresh on the subject. lie was probably sixteen
years old when with two others ho passed through what he
thus relates.
‘ Father, let me tell you how I went into the Qa/.tt, I did
not know what it was when my brother said to me, Now you
are to go into the Qata, Then I went, and there was a very
great crowd in the place where they were celebrating the Qa/,11.
Then my brother asked me, Are you strong? and I answered
him and said, All right! If I should die, all right! After
that I went where there was a building, a gamal, put up for
the purpose not far from the village; my in a to (dress) and
ornaments were taken off, and I went inside. The gamal was
narrow, low, and very long, and they had placed inside it two
rows of ka/a/o leaves (of the nettle-tree) sprinkled with salt-
water, which met together about a yard from the ground.
And 1 bent my knees and 1 ran into it. And that thing, the
tia/afo, that (hey had put in the yumal, bites exceedingly, and
they had heated the salt-water before they poured it on the
leaves, not stalks, nothing but leaves, and they bite exceed-
ingly. Then when I came out from that thing 1 cried as
I never did before or since, and nearly fainted with pain ; and
I neither ate nor drank water, but did nothing but cry for
two days, and then I ate food. And the pig (one of his
brother’s which had been given as an entrance lee) theyv.] New Hebrides. Aurora Island.	89
cooked in an oven ; and they gave me some before it was
done, and I ate it. After that I was thirsty, and they made a
very small hole in the ground by stamping with the heel and
poured cocoa-nut juice into it, and I drank. And they dashed
water over me, which caused great pain. And the food that
they gave me was extremely bad. When I was hungry they
roasted a caladium root over the fire and gave it me underdone ;
and they trod my food into the ashes ; and the water they
poured on the ground, and then I drank the water. And if I
had refused they would have beaten me to death ; but I did
not refuse, and I ate that food which they made so very bad
for me. For my mashed food they mashed it on the ground ;
and they grated bananas that were not full grown to make
loko, and stirred it together with dung ; but we three did not
quite eat up that loko that they made. Then we had to take
up live embers in our hands ; they stood round us with guns,
and we laid hold on that burning fire ; they commanded us to
do it, and we laid hold of that fire. And we lay down on the
ground and they trod upon us; they all ran over us, one of
them taking the lead, and when he had stamped on us as
he ran they all stamped on us. After that, when we rose
from the ground, one man took a bow and pretended to
shoot us. And we did not sit properly down, but lay down
on the ground to eat our food, and our water also we lay
down and drank. And with regard to that Qatu it is of
tree-fern put together like planks, and we grated the qeta
(caladium) and made the Qatu with it. And in the night
after that we danced, and next morning we danced for the
first time the Qatu dance; and after we had been thirty
days in that gamal we killed a pig, and then went back
into the village and stayed in the gamal and cooked that pig.
And if one wishes to stay forty days in that gamal (i. e. of
initiation) he then comes out; but that nettle will not soon
leave him.’
Not satisfied with this experience, the same youth was
afterwards admitted into another society in the way which he
thus describes. 1 Father, here again is another Qatu whichgo	Secret Societies and Mysteries.	[ch.
we call the Taputae, and exceedingly bad it is. It is well
that I should tell you the story of what they did to me.
It was thus. They dug a deep hole, but not very deep, and
brought a great quantity of dung and put it in the hole, till
it was full of that very nasty dung; and they also poured
water into the hole so that a man could sink in it. That
hole was not like the well here, but it was dug like the drain
by the kumara house beside the road ; such it was, and I
got into it; and this body of mine was all dung, and my
hair also was all dung ; and there was a man who poured a
great quantity of dung over me. Then I got out, and
washed myself in good water. But those others, grown up
men, did not get into that; they did nothing but cry.
Then some went away, and we danced in the night till morn-
ing, and then we danced the Qatu dance. After that we
killed a pig. And the women cannot eat that pig, nor can
some men, because they have not yet been initiated; and
that pig is all eaten up at once, none of it will be put by, it
will be eaten quite up.’
He adds that the bark of the varu, an hibiscus, is beaten
out white for the decoration of this Qat/t, and that the
initiated will take a bit of this bark, catch a fish for it, and
burn the bark as he cooks the fish, thinking that he will
thereby obtain mana, magical power, for catching that kind
of fish. If as he carries this bark lie meets an outsider in
the path who sees it, he will either kill him on the spot, or else
he will take a pig from him, and the members of the Qat will
agree to eat the pig and let him live.
There is in the same island another institution of the same
character called the Wei a. In this the neophyte lies down
on his face in a hole in the ground cut exactly to his shape,
and lighted cocoa-nut fronds are cast upon his back. He
cannot move, and he will not cry. The scars remain upon
his back—the mark of membership. While initiation into
this is going on there are certain trials or games. A bundle
of sticks is tied with a band of some creeper, and one of the
neophytes cuts at it with an axe. If he severs it with onev.]	New Hebrides. Aurora Island.	91
stroke his party score a gain; if he fails the initiated fall
upon the others and they fight. The two parties also play
the ‘ tug of war ’ with a large creeper ; if the neophjdes pull
the others over they go the sooner out of the enclosure ; if
the others prevail they have to wait.
There are two things here which call for remark. The
expression £ dancing the Qat,’ and the fact that each mystery
has its owu dance, to learn which is the chief part of the
Masked Dancers at Aurora.
initiation, recall the dances of the Greek mysteries, and the
African Bushman’s use of ' dance ’ as equivalent to ‘ mystery.’
(Lang’s Custom and Myth.) But it appears certain that in
these Qatu and Welu there is no secret knowledge conveyed,
no esoteric religious instruction given, no mystery but the
construction of the Qat it figure and the manner of the Qatu
dance. In the second place the question arises, why, if no
other advantage is to be gained than the position of an
initiated member, natives are willing to pay the entrance92	Secret Societies and Mysteries.	[ch.
fees and suffer as they do. But as it is certain that there is
no 1 making of young men,’ and that initiation is not a step
to matrimony, so it is equally certain that the social position
of a native depends very much upon his membership of the
most important of these clubs ; an outsider could never be
a person of consequence; a man of good social position
would think it his duty to secure the same position for
his son by entering him early in the clubs to which he
himself belonged. To receive a new member with trials of
his endurance, to let him rise into equality only through
pain and contumely, has been, and may still be, the way of
Universities and Schools ; and there is no reason why the
attraction of a mysterious secret which draws civilized men
should not work upon the savage. The native neophyte
also expected before his initiation that he really should
join in company with the ghosts of the departed; when
he was illuminated he enjoyed the deception of those who
followed him, and was well satisfied to eat their pigs and
take their money.
In the island of Araga, Pentecost or Whitsuntide, im-
mediately south of Aurora, the institution is called the Qeta.
I have the description of it from one who was made a member
as an infant, but has seen all the proceedings of late years.
The rites are celebrated at uncertain intervals, whenever there
are a sufficient number of candidates forthcoming from a group
of villages ; at intervals perhaps of six or ten years. Some
great man (or two or three of them together) presides and
manages the arrangements, and teaches the songs and dance ;
the Qefa is said to be his or theirs. The scene of the meeting
is some vie gogona, a place on which tapu has been laid.
Many small houses are built there, in which the boys live
during the first part of their seclusion. Boys of all ages are
initiated, generally about the time of putting on the malo, the
dress worn by men ; all are initiated sooner or later, none
grow up without it; to put on the malo and to enter the
Qe/a are necessary steps in life. The entrance payment is
a mat given by the father, or guardian, one for each boy.v.] New Hebrides. Pentecost Island. 93
When the day appointed for the Qeta comes, all the initiated
assemble at the place, and the women keep away. There is no
enclosure, but when the ceremony begins a stick is laid upon
the ground as a mark of entrance, and two companies of the
initiated stand singing within the mark with a space between
them. The boy who enters steps over the stick, and as he
does so, if he has already a malo, they break unexpectedly his
girdle string ; the malo falls and he enters naked. If the boy
is too young to walk, he is carried over by his. father or the
friend who pays for him. The boys do not remain naked
during the whole time of their seclusion, a fresh malo is given
to each of them. My informant, himself initiated in his
father’s arms, began his story by saying that the Qeta was
exceedingly bad. Being desired at the end of it to point out
what there was exceedingly bad in the whole proceeding he
referred to this, to expose a boy naked who had the malo was
very bad indeed. When entered the neophytes stay in the
houses, except when they come out to eat and sing and dance;
they have their bodies blackened with charcoal, and wear no
ornaments. There are long rows of seats made on which the
boys sit to eat; the initiated feed them, giving each a bite,
and the boys get nothing else to eat, though the initiated
bring in food for themselves and eat it privately. The boys
are taught a dance and song, singing aloud and dancing
round the seats. The meaning of the song is trifling ; its use
is to mark the steps of the dance. There is absolutely no
secret, or any other knowledge communicated than that of
the song and dance, and nothing else in the way of initiation.
The time of seclusion is uncertain. After the first three days
the greater number of the initiated go away; food runs short,
though the boys have very small bites; they begin to scatter
a little, not going into the villages, but living in little houses
near the gardens, the men looking after and feeding each
household of boys. The whole time of seclusion lasts about
five months, that is to say that yams are planted when it
begins and the harvest is waited for. In the later time the
restriction as to food is easier, but no fish or shell-fish is94	Secret Societies and Mysteries.	[ch.
allowed ; the beach is made gogona, unapproachable, on their
behalf; no one can go there to gather shell-fish. During the
whole time of seclusion the boys are not allowed to wash, and
their bodies have become quite black. The conclusion, there-
fore, of the whole thing is that when the first yams are dug
they assemble in one body and go down to the beach to wash
and eat. The women then come and look at them. After
this they return to their villages, and having become tari,
they assume a name with that prefix, Tariliu, Tarisuluana.
In all there appears to be no thought of intercourse with
ghosts or spirits; but no doubt the master of the qeta makes
his prayers and offerings for success.
III. Solomon Islands. From the New Hebrides to Florida
in the Solomon Islands is a long step, but in the Matambala
appears very plainly another form of the Qatu. The seat of
it is a district of Florida called Belaga, where alone the rites
were celebrated, men from the other districts coming to be
initiated there. The origin of the institution is ascribed to
one Siko, who came from Bugotu in Ysabel. To him sacrifices
were made in their assemblies by a succession of men who had
received the office till the year 1883, when the last embraced
Christianity, and the Matambala came to an end. The mys-
teries were celebrated at irregular intervals of six or ten years,
but the initiated formed a permanent body, and a certain part
of the beach at Belaga with the forest behind it was always
tambu, so that no uninitiated person might enter the precincts,
and no woman might pass along the beach. Within this
sacred region there were twelve vunutla sanctuaries, and in
each one a sacred vovolo house was built; but the two vnnutlia
at Materago and at Volotha were far more important than the
rest, and the houses built there so sacred that no man entered
them nor even approached them ; there were images in them
of birds and fish, crocodiles and sharks, the sun and moon, and
men. The building of these two houses was the beginning
of the chief part of the proceedings. In all that they did
they supposed themselves to be following the course of Siko’s
actions.Solomon Islands. Florida.
95
v.]
I have a written account of the proceeding’s sent from Belaga
by an old friend and pupil of mine, and explained to me in
all particulars in Norfolk Island by a native of a neighbouring
district, who remembered his own initiation perfectly well.
I have also been furnished by Bishop Selwyn with the account
given to him at Belaga, the seat of the Matambala, by initiated
men. It is not easy in all points to connect the two accounts,
and some of the particulars are described with unnecessary
minuteness, but the general course and character of the
proceedings are plain h The month in which the whole
begins is that in which the canarium almonds become ripe,
and the bigo, the gathering of the first-fruits, hereafter to be
described, is the first step in the ceremonial. The cracking of
the nuts begins at Gole and goes through the twelve places to
Buthinigai. The women and children set baskets in rows
along the road when the new moon of bigo is seen, and the
men gather the almonds from morning till nightfall, and fill
the baskets with them. The next moon is the moon of
sweeping, and they sweep the paths from Gole to Buthinigai,
signifying that the paths are now reserved for the Matambala.
Then follows the time of the close tambn, when the whole
district becomes sacred, and the Teimbelaga, when they all
assemble at Materago to see the sasale dance of Siko in the
night.
On the following morning the Matambala, those already
1 The native account begins, ‘ The Story of Siko who began it, a man from
over sea. Siko was a man of former times, a countryman of Bugotu. And
Doriki and he separated ; the reason of their separation was that Siko should
not be chief, said Doriki, and Doriki should not be chief, said Siko ; and Doriki
got the upper hand, so that Siko fled secretly, and made his way hither
to Belaga ; he first came ashore down at Siota, and he liked the place there,
but he looked back and still could see to Bugotu, so he put agaiu into his
canoe his men and property, and came along to Materago, where he could no
longer see to Bugotu, and so there he dwelt. After that he divided them (the
men with him) to twelve villages, to Gole, Vunavutu, Salesapa, Talabuga,
Materago, Nagokama, Taiegu, Balotoga, Tangadala, Volotha, Mavealu,
Buthinigai; and he said to them, Let us do things as we did at Bugotu, said
he to them. And he chose them to be chiefs in those villages,’—their names
being given, one to each village.tj6	Secret Societies and Mysteries.	[ch.
initiated, go down to occupy houses that have been built upon
the beach, and remain there till the proceedings are over. The
initiated from each village take with them their friends who
are to be admitted, but do not yet let them enter the vunutha,
the sanctuary in the bush, where they themselves are occupied
in making the structures of bamboo which are called the
tinclalo, the ghosts. These were of several forms. One called
the Voi was described to the Bishop as a screen some ten feet
long by nine high, made of bark painted and ornamented, and
carried out by several men behind it into the open, where it
could be seen by the women, children, and uninitiated, who
firmly believed it to be not so much the handiwork of ghosts
as an appearance of the ghosts themselves. Another, the
Koitaba-vunutha, was so large that eighty or a hundred men
inside it carried it down to the beach, where the outside
population gazed at it. There was another instrument, the
Kuhn, a wooden club with a bird’s head. One of the first pro-
ceedings of the Matambala men after the paths were swept,
and the country was made close, was to cut down tall bamboos
for these structures, tie them in bundles, and lay them in the
sun to dry. ‘ After a while they brought these down to the
vunutha, and added length to length till they were extremely
long; and then they took vines and sago spathes and fastened
them to the bamboos which they had prepared; and then
they took coleus and turmeric ; the coleus they chewed for the
juice and squeezed wild oranges to mix with it and make it
red; and the turmeric they pounded in a wooden pot. Then
they painted with these things the sago spathes that they had
fastened on to the bamboos, variegated and dazzling, very
fearful for us to behold.’ The tinclalo figures, of which thirty
or forty were made in one place, must have resembled the
Qat-u masks or hats of the Banks’ Islands, though they were
very much higher ; for like them they were conical in shape,
and were moved by men inside them. ‘And when all was
finished they appointed their day for the spectacle; and all
the women and boys came out in the evening and viewed the
tinclalo, and all the men in the vunutha held up and broughtFlorida ' Matambalal
97
V.
down the fi .dah: images to the beach : and all the women and
the boys thought that thev were nothing but ghosts, because
they did not know how they were made. After that they
appointed again the day after the morrow for the show, and
when that day came the women again came out into the open
for the spectacle. And when the show made in that way
was over, the men took the i. id ale images back into the
rumtia, and burnt up with fire all those images. A hen that
was done, all the men came back to their villages from
the w/ii'fla. And it was not possible to make known to
women and boys things of this kind : but at length, when this
Gospel reached us. then it came out. so that all the women
and the boys and the uninitiated understood all about things
of this kind.'
The uninitiated were called v\ h. the neophvtes the new
IMatambala. As in the Banks'Islands and the New Hebrides,
there was no knowledge communicated, except of the fact that
whatever was done was the work of men and not of ghosts,
which was no doubt a surprising revelation. Still, however, we
mav be sure that the IMatambala, new and old. firmly believed
that the art of making the images and the course of all their
proceedings had been taught by Siko. now a t.nda!:. and that
thev were guided and enabled by the supernatural assistance of
Siko and his companions, now findalo. and by the ghosts also of
their eminent predecessors in the IMatambala. all of whom as
well as Siko were invoked with sacrifices. But there was no
esoteric doctrine taught, nor any secret imparted beyond that of
the making of the images. On this point the witness of the
initiated is as clear in Florida as in the Banks' Islands and the
Xew Hebrides. A certain rite, or mark, of initiation there
was: the candidate clasped a tree, and was touched in six
places with a fire-stick on shoulders, loins, and buttocks.
When thus branded they were told that they were now Siko-
men. or Siko s messengers. In admission to these mysteries,
also, there was no limit of age. and no time of life more ap-
propriate than another. Grown-up men were admitted, who
generallv came Irom other parts of the island: at BeLiga
H98	Secret Societies and Mysteries.	[ch.
and the immediate neighbourhood the boys were initiated
whenever the ceremonies took place. Young children, even
sucklings, were made Matambala ; for the latter they would go
into the villages and beg milk from the women, since the
infants could not come out of the sacred precints and the
women could not go in ; they were branded with the slender
midribs of the leaflets of the cocoa-nut. Nothing was paid for
entrance to the Matambala. The initiation of the new members
was not performed till they had been some time living in the
houses on the beach, while the mysterious figures were being
constructed in the secret places in the wood; it was part of
their preparation that they should be frightened by the bird-
headed clubs, the IcuJcu. and they were threatened with death
if they revealed the secrets. Altogether they remained away
from their homes three months.
During the whole of this time the Matambala, under cover of
the terror of their pretended association with ghosts, and
taking advantage of the closing of the paths, were playing
tricks and robbing in all the country round. They would
come as far as to Gaeta to steal pigs to sacrifice to Siko ; they
would cut down trees to fall across the roads, and no one
dared remove them ; they would pull down cocoa-nut palms
and big trees with ropes in the night as a proof that the
ghosts were abroad, for no mere man could be supposed so
strong as to overthrow them. From time to time they
sacrificed to Siko. More than once also they made their
appearance in the villages. ! When the bamboos have been
cut down, they appoint a three days’ space for the going up
inland of the ghosts (that is, of the Matambala), and when the
three days’ spiace is past, then about the time of the clock
striking ten at night the ghosts go up. And all the women
in the villages have been making tutu and gola (mashes of food)
since morning. And when the night has come the men of the
Matambala down at the beach take buro (hull-roarers), and
seesee (bundles of cocoa-nut fronds to beat over a stick), and go
up inland with them and approach the village ; and they beat
the seesee and whirl the buro, and come into the village; andFlorida ‘I\Iatambala’.
99
v.]
they whistle and cluck, and all the women in the village shut
fast their houses and are much afraid, because they think that
they are surely ghosts ; and they take the tutu and the gold,
and give it to the ghosts outside. Then all the men cry
mbuembue, and go down hack again to the shore. After that,
again, they fix their day for the going up of the ghosts, and
they fix the fourth day; and when the fourth day has come,
and it is night, then they take again as before the seesee and
the buro, and go out again, and go and beat the seesee and
whirl the buro, and whistle and cluck ; and again they give
them the tutu and soisombi mixed with almonds ; and then all
the men cry mbuembue, and go down again to the beach.’ The
women prepared small holes in the wall of the house, through
which to push out the food to the Matambala, a contrivance to
prevent them from feeling the hands of the men. When the
women hear the whistle they ask,1 Who are you, are you Siko ? ’
and the man whistles in answer and takes the food. Great
care was taken lest the men should be seen when the ghosts
were believed to be about, and the Matambala were covered, as
elsewhere, with a cloak of leaves; but in the daytime they
went among the women, gave notice of what the ghosts were
going to do, and called attention to what had been done by
them.
The downfall of this superstition and imposture has been
complete. It had long been undermined by the free admission
of Florida boys and young men into the salagoro of the Banks’
Islands, and the knowledge acquired there of what ghost
mysteries really were. No Matambala celebration had taken
place for some years ; all the young people knew how the
thing was done, though the elders did not give up their belief
in Siko, or the notion that there was something supernatural
about it. At length, as said before, the man who knew how
to sacrifice to Siko became a Christian, the sacred precincts
were explored, bull-roarers became the playthings of the boys,
and the old men sat and wept over the profanation and their
loss of power and privilege h
1 ‘ I was sorry one day to hear that a lot of Gaeta young men had been
H 3ioo Secret Societies and Mysteries.
I know of no other Matambala or similar institution in the
Solomon Islands ; but in Malanta and Ulawa there is a period
of seclusion for a bojr as he grows up, which to a Banks’
islander appears to be an entrance into the salagoro.
chaffing some old fellows who came from Materago to such an extent that they
sat down and cried bitterly.’ Journal of Rev. A. Penny, under whose teaching
the downfall of the mysteries was brought about.CHAPTER VI.
SOCIETIES. CLUBS.
In every village and group of houses in the Torres Islands,
the Banks’ Islands, and the Northern New Hebrides, is con-
spicuous a building which does not appear to he a dwelling-
house. In a populous village of the Banks’ Islands it is very
long and low, with entrances at intervals along the sides
below the wall-plate, with stone seats or a stone platform at
the main entrances at either end, and low stone walls planted
with dracaenas and crotons near the same, with the jawbones
of pigs and backbones of fish hanging under the eaves ; and
very often the clatter of pounding sticks in wooden vessels and
white clouds of steam make known the preparation of a meal.
This is a gamal. The same name, and a building of the same
general character, with some difference of form, is to be found
in the New Hebrides as far south as the Shepherd Islands at
least. What are called 1 Chiefs’ houses ’ in New Caledonia
probably represent the same. In some of the Banks’ Islands,
again, a visitor on entering a village would see one or more
platforms squarely built up of stones, with high, pointed
little edifices upon them, open in the front like shrines, the
embers of a fire below, and above an image grotesquely shaped
in human form. He would naturally take these for shrines
of idols with the altars of sacrifices to them ; but these also
are gamal; the little edifice is the eating-place of a man of
rank ; the fire has cooked his food, which none but he in that
place can eat, and the image is the emblem of his degree.
In another island of the same group a gamal maybe seen with102
Societies or Clubs.
[CH.
one end newly built and loftier than the rest, or else with one
end in ruin while the rest is in good repair and full occupation.
Here again there is a man, perhaps two or three, lately raised
to a new degree, for whom a special eating-place has been
prepared; or the men of high degree have all died out from
the village, and no one of lower rank can enter into their
place. Within, these long buildings are found to be divided
across by log fences, the tingtingiav, the fire-boundaries ; each
division contains its oven, with the appliances for cookery
around; log pillows and mats complete the furniture. The
tjamal is a club-house, and the club is called the Suqe
in the islands where I have any considerable acquaintance
with it.
In all the Melanesian groups it is the rule that there is in
every village a building of public character, where the men
eat and spend their time, the young men sleep, strangers are
entertained ; where as in the Solomon Islands the canoes are
kept; where images are seen, and from which women are
generally excluded; the kiala of Florida, the oha of San
Cristoval, the maclai of Santa Cruz, the lamhu house of traders,
the lure of Fiji ; and all these no doubt correspond to the
halai and other public halls of the Malay Archipelago.
But these are not club-houses, as are the (jawal houses of the
Suqe, which serve indeed to a considerable extent for public
purposes, because almost every man is a member of the club,
but are in fact the homes of a society in which every one has
his place according to his rank in the society.
The name Suqe is the same as that of the Hid, the super-
natural personage, Supwe of the New Hebrides, but it is
doubtful whether any connexion between the two really
exists; for in the Banks’ Islands, where the society is in
great vigour, there is no Vui Suqe known, and in Whitsun-
tide of the New Hebrides, where the Hid Supwe is recognized,
the society has another name. Nothing is known of the
origin of the club. It is not connected with the secret
societies of the ghosts, and is not a secret society of the same
kind. The club-house is in the open, and every one, exceptvi.]	Banks Islands ‘ Suqe.’	103
when new members are admitted, can see what is going- on,
though women are most strictly excluded. It is a social, not
at all a religious, institution ; yet, inasmuch as religious
practices enter into the common life of the people, and all
success and advance in life is believed to be due to mana,
supernatural influence, the aid of unseen powers is sought for
by fasting, sacrifices, and prayers, in order to mount to the
successive degrees of the society. To rise from step to step
money is wanted, and food and pigs; no one can get these
unless he has mana for it; therefore as mana gets a man on
in the &'uqe, so every one high in the Suqe is certainly a man
with mana, and a man of authority, a great man, one who may
be called a chief, whom traders may call a king. A man who
has got to the very top and emerged, me root, is a very great
man indeed ; he has the title of IVeluka, as if he had reached
the sky; he is of a rank which very few have attained, and
without his consent, to be obtained by substantial payment,
no one can be advanced at all. In the Banks’ Island stories
the poor lad or orphan who becomes the Fortunate Youth
rises to greatness by the Suqe ; he takes the highest grade in
this instead of marrying the king’s daughter. In the absence
of an y more directly political arrangements among the people,
it is plain that a valuable bond of society is furnished by the
Suqe, in which the male population generally is united, and in
which a considerable power of control is vested in the elder
and richer men, who can admit or reject candidates for the
higher ranks as they think fit. The great mass of the natives
never rise above the middle rank, many never arrive at that;
but almost all, for the exceptions are very rare, are brought
while still boys into the society. A man who has never
entered has the nickname of a lusa, a kind of flying fox which
does not gather with the flocks of the common sort. At
entrance and at every successive step money has to be paid to
those who have already attained it, and a feast more or less
costly given according to the rank to be attained. Hence,
while hardly any lad is so friendless as not to enter the
lowest division, hardly any live to rise to the highest place ;io4
Societies or Clubs.
[CH,
unless indeed they have entered very young, have had their
early steps bought for them, and have been very prosperous
in their undertakings. The higher steps are occasion of large
popular gatherings and feasts, with songs and dances, and
come near to the kolekole hereafter to be described ; there are
hats also and images appropriated to these highest ranks.
The number of ovens and ranks varies in different islands;
Ihe people of each think their own Sitqe the correct one; but
all acknowledge the value of the respective ranks, though they
may be attained under very various conditions.
In the Banks’ Islands the Suqe of Mota has many steps
and ovens, all av-tapug. Beginning with the lowest: (1) Bur-vi.]	Banks' Islands ‘ Suqe.'	105
won, (2) Avrig, (3) Qat tagiav, (4) Avtagataga, (5) Luwaiav, (6)
Tamasuria, (7) Tavasuqe, (8) Tavasuqelava, (9) Kerepue, (1 o) Mele,
(11) Tetug, (12) Lano, [ 13) Poroporolava, (14) Wometeloa, (15)
Welgan, (16) Wesuhut, (17) Wetciur-o-meligo, (18) 1'iqangicono.
The lowest are commonly skipped over or taken together; on
the other hand, there are three degrees under the eleventh
name, and two under the twelfth. Some of the names carry a
meaning with them: avrig, the little fire; kerepue, the bottom
of the bamboo water-carrier ; mele, the cycas, which has a certain
sanctity; poroporolava, great joking ; wometeloa, the face of the
sun ; icetaur-o-meligo, catches the clouds; tiqangwono, shoots and
completes. The lano wears a very tall conical hat, like that of
the Qa(, but sometimes forked ; the poroporolava has an image
of a man ringed black and white ; the wometeloa an image of
a man carrying on his head with outstretched arms a disk
representing the firmament, with heavenly bodies painted on
it. These images are carried about at the feast which cele-
brates the step in rank, and are afterwards set up in the little
gamal in which the great man cooks his food ; the hat is
worn by the new lano at the feast he makes, and is afterwards
to be seen leaning against the gamal. At Gaua in Santa
Maria the ovens are not so many; boys begin high up, so
that a Gaua boy often ranks with a gray-haired Mota man.
Those who reach the higher ranks build a gamal on a lofty
platform of stones for every oven or step, for which at Mota
they are content to raise the gamal end. In the Torres
Islands, or at least in one of them, there are only seven ovens
and degrees of ranks in the Huqa, as the Suqe is there called,
and in the gamal, the first being the avium, big fire, which
is rather on the threshold of the gamal than in it. Young
boys do not enter into the club there. In all these islands
the distinction between each successive stage is strictly
marked; any one stepping over the boundary to the oven
above him would be trampled to death by those on whom he
had intruded.
The way of entering the Suqe and making further advances
in it is fixed and elaborate. The candidate must have in the106	Societies or Clubs.	[ch.
first place his introducer, a boy’s mother’s brother by rights,
whose good-will some months before must be secured by the
present of a pig, which is made over formally to him with a
slap upon its back. Having undertaken to make the suqe for
his candidate, the patron makes a feast for him with a dance,
decorating the village square with male pandanus flowers, and
setting out money for him ; the partakers of the feast, in-
cluding the candidate, make him a present of a little money,
and he makes a return present to them ; they vene, shoot, and
he sar, compensates. For the lowest grade in Mota the vene
money is only half a fathom, returned with a full fathom ; for
the higher grades very much money is required, and some-
times money fails and pigs are brought in. A bo}r who has
no property of his own is supplied by his father or some
friend with what is necessary for engaging the patronage of
his uncle, upon whom the expense chiefly falls. In the higher
grades the candidate for advance still has his patron, but the
expenses fall upon himself, aided by his friends with gifts,
wategae, of pigs and money; his wife’s father is expected to
be liberal in this. The candidate makes a return to the
patron as liberally as he can for all that he has done in his
behalf. The formal entrance into the society, or into a higher
grade in it, has two parts. When the time comes, a day
having been appointed and made known, the women leave the
village before nightfall, and the members meet in the gamal.
The candidate goes into the division in which is the fire and
oven to which he is to belong. His patron breaks the string
of some money and sheds it into a basket; the others put on
the money a garland of bamboo leaves in the lower degrees,
of cyeas leaves for the mete, C3rcas, rank and all above it.
This is to soso ma/comaJco, to fill the garland. The new
member then sits, and some one who is chosen for his fluency
of speech discourses to him, tells him that it is his duty to
work for his oven and not to complain if his duties are hard.
They then give him a bit of an almond, and each member
takes a bit in his hand; they all hold the almond to their
lips, and at a certain word they negneg, eat together. Thevi.]	Banks Islands ‘ Suqe.’	107
word is only this, ‘ I give you food from my fire.’ Then the
money in the basket is distributed; they sese maJcomalco, pull
apart the garland. The gana tajmg, the ceremonial eating, is
thus finished in the night; next morning, nowadays, comes
the tool tajmg, the buying of the suqe; in former days an
interval of ten days came in. The new member now breaks
his money strings, touches the food of various kinds that he
has provided, which he could not do before for he had been
fasting for some days, and distributes his money and food to
every fire-place in the gamal. A general feast follows. He
himself has to goto, to remain in the gamal and eat only from
his av tajmg, his suqe fire, for so many days according to his
rank ; for the middle ranks five days or ten, for the highest
ranks many more. The feast made at the entrance to a
higher rank is a public one, the distinction between the food
cooked in the ceremonial fire, the av tajmg, and the rest
being carefully preserved. Where, as in the highest ranks,
there are but few present who can eat from the oven newly
reached, food from it is sent to a distance to men of the same
rank. The pigs also, the chief provision and mark of an
abundant hospitality, are not killed and consumed at the
feast; they are sent off to different quarters, with a slap from
the newly-raised member of the club, by whom or in behalf
of whom they have been given, and sometimes with a
ceremonial representation of being killed. For the lower
ranks, or in a wealthy family where it is a matter of course
that a boy should have his steps bought for him, the feast is
a merry-making of the neighbours; crowds flock to the great
feasts and dances which are made when the highest steps are
taken, and when the new man desires to make the most of his
social elevation. There was a dress, malo-saru,used only on such
an occasion, now no longer to be seen ; a kind of cape, in
four oblong parts, beautifully made in coloured matting, the
highest product of Banks’ Island art. The candidate for such
steps would not be seen for many days before, being confined
in an inner chamber in the gamal, and fasting there. On such
an occasion, moreover, logs of a tree called jialalo are broughtio8
Societies or Clubs.
[CH,
out, which are supposed to be heavy with the ghostly power
which they contain and symbolize, that mana without which
nothing important can succeed. The incidents of one of
‘ MALO-SAUU ’ DANCING DRESS.
these feasts are thus described : ‘ Seven pataka logs dressed in
cycas leaves and flowers were brought in on the shoulders of
men of rank, who walked as if the weight was heavy onvi.]	Banks' Islands ‘ Sttqe.'	109
them. Then, preceded by a man carrying aloft in a dish the
money paid for the pal ah 0 by the giver of the feast, the
bearers danced round with them as if with burdened steps.
A drum was beating all the time, and singing going on.
The newly-advanced giver of the feast danced out and round,
kicking up his heels behind him, and carrying a palm-leaf
umbrella before his face, because of his modesty, they said, in
his new position. Then a man of high position in the Suqe
pranced forth and made a speech. The correct thing seems to
be to pant a good deal, as other people cough, to disguise a
want of eloquence ; it shews that the orator is a man of sub-
stance, well fed and short-winded. He trotted backwards and
forwards before the palakos, with his new messmate at his
heels modestly covering his face. His speech was interpreted
as to this effect: “ This man has had difficulty in getting into
this position ; he has been a long while about it, but we have
now let him in. He has spent a. great deal of money on
these palakos and decorations, and he gives many pigs ; he
does the thing very handsomely.” Then the pigs were
brought out one by one and smacked by the giver of the
feast, as he handed them over to another great man who
decided where they were to go. There were four or five great
fat beasts, each with his own name, and several more of lesser
dignity. As each pig was smacked, three other great men
blew a loud blast on conch-shells. Then the new man laid
out his money on the ground, and the conchs were blown
again. The last act of the ceremony was the appearance of
another great man with a bow and arrows. He and the
modest host, with his palm-leaf over his face, capered about for
a while, and then he made his speech to this effect: “ The
man who undertook to introduce this new member to his
present position is dead; but I have taken him up instead.
He has done handsomely—pigs, money, and everything that
is right.” Then he rushed at the biggest pig, whose name
was Puss, and shot him with two arrows, much to his disgust.
This was only a form of killing the pig, for the arrows were
quite light ones. After this the host himself made a littleI IO
Societies or Chibs.
[ch.
speech. I could not hear what he said ; he had not been
allowed to eat for five days, and was weak; but I was told
that it was to the effect that some people had said the money
was not enough, and now here was some more.'
Though women are completely excluded from the Suqe of
the men, they have something of the sort among them-
selves, which is called improperly by the same name. They
admit to grades of honour on payment of money and making
of a feast, and so become tavine motar, women of distinction.
By their Suqe they become rich in money, with which to
help their husbands in their steps in rank, and they plant
their own gardens for the feasts. Thus they advance to be
tattooed, to wear shell bracelets, to put on an ornamented
pari, the woman’s scanty garment, to decorate their faces
with red earth, in all which glories the tavine worawora, the
common woman, can have no share. But this is in the wTay
of kolekole rather than of suqe ; twro things wrhich become so
connected in the higher ranks of men that an account of one
is incomplete without an explanation of the other.
A kolekole is a feast with dancing and singing made in
connexion wTith a certain object, and giving a certain rank
marked by its appropriate ornament. A man makes such a
feast for himself, or for his son or nephew. When one has
reached the highest place in the Suqe, he can still advance
in the world by kolekole; and he often accompanies with
these his regular progress in Suqe rank. The story of the Little
Orphan exhibits in a succession of these festivals a picture
of native grandeur and success. When a man builds a new
house he will hole it, and a nule, a grotesque image, will
remain as a memorial at the door. When a new gamal for
the Suqe is built, or when a man adds a compartment for the
oven to which he has lately risen or is to rise, there is a
kole-gamal. A stone is brought up from the beach and placed
near the gamal, or a wona, a platform of stones, is built up,
and a feast is made to hole it. The maker of the feast, or
the youth in whose honour it is made, dances on the stone,
and can wear upon his ankle afterwards a wetapup, an orna-vi.] Banks Islands ‘ Suqe,' ‘ Kolekolel 111
ment of the fine feathers from near the eyes of fowls, dyed
crimson and woven into a string, and the stone remains
as a memorial. A kolekole ngere qoe gives the right to wear
a necklace of weiapup, and the hero of the occasion dances
in a hat. Another kind gives the right to wear a pig’s tail
in the hair; I have seen a man at Maewo with five and
twenty. If a man had a wonderful or rare thing in his
possession, brought from foreign parts perhaps, as a white
cockatoo from the Solomon Islands, he might hole this; or
more probably he would take advantage of another man’s
feast, and dance about exhibiting it. Orators mounted on the
gamal roof, or on the new-built house, would harangue the
crowd, setting forth the virtues of the giver of the feast;
others would go about with baskets of his money proclaim-
ing his liberality; the decorated palalco logs heavy with
ma/au would be carried in; pigs would be dismissed to distant
villages with a smack from the giver; crowds from all parts
assembled ; dancers and drummers exerted themselves in view
of the morrow’s payment; women competed with new songs
for a prize and honour. It was a great thing for a man to
have a large assemblage at his feast, and a great satisfaction
to his enemy to prevent it; each would therefore use charms
to further his purpose. A man would rub the leaves of a
scented ginger-plant, or a strong-smelling erytbrina, in his
hands overnight and hang them over the fire ; he would chop
the twigs and leaves, singing over them a charm; he would
chew and puff all night to get mana ; in the morning he
would blow his shell trumpet to spread abroad the influence
of his leaves, which would avid, draw a multitude to the feast.
A counteracting charm from the adversary would make men
feel disinclined to go. Another decoration to be obtained by
giving a dance and feast is the wrai non Qat of Mota, no ran
Qat of the Torres Islands, where perhaps it is now most
practised, the head anointing of Qat. The head is smeared
over with a mixture of a certain dust from a tree with the
juice of coleus leaves and native oranges and salt water, which
makes a brilliant red colour. There is another preparation ofI I 2
Societies or Clubs.
[ch.
yellow colour. The Vui Ro Som in the Story of Ganviviris,
when she made her appearance with all the ornaments that
money could procure the right to wear, was thus adorned.
A feast of the same kind is held to commemorate a deliver-
ance, a Yovo feast; when the famine and misery following on
a disastrous hurricane had passed away at Mota, and food was
once more abundant, then they celebrated a 1 ovo feast; such
a feast was made by a native of the same island when he had
quite recovered from a slight wound received at Santa Cruz;
lie danced about exhibiting his hat with the arrow through it.
In the northern part of Maewo, Aurora, in the New
Hebrides, the Suqe is now nearly extinct; the old members
use the gamal as a convenient resort, but no one cares for
admission. The reason for this in a great measure is that
a place in the Suqe was in old times valued for the advantages
it carried with it after death. A native wrote that ‘ the reason
for Suqe is this, that hereafter when a man comes to die, his
soul may remain in happiness in that place Panoi; hut if any
one should die who has not killed a pig, his soul will just stay
on a tree, hanging for ever on it like a flying fox. On this
account no man likes his son to remain without anything
being done; it is a matter of the first importance for him
that he should get many pigs and seek money (i. e. mats), so
that hereafter when all is prepared he may give that money
to those who have already killed pigs, and that he may be all
right.’ Consequently, on the birth of a son a man s first care
was to give a pig in his name to make a beginning of Suqe
for him. But a place in the Suqe carried with it here also the
same rank and consideration as in the Banks’ Islands ; among
children even, one whose father had not given a pig for his
admission would be despised; and when a man had killed his
pigs properly afterwards on his own account his position in
society was secured. ‘ He can adorn himself with pigs’ tusks,
and with that white shell-money that we have, and with the
leaves of trees most thought of, croton and dracaena or cycas,
and he thinks to himself, Now 1 am clear of trouble, there is
nothing that weighs upon me now.’ My friend adds thatvi.]	New Hebrides. Lepers Island. 113
‘ there are some now who have perceived that there is no
truth in this ; and these things they say are the deceits and
vanities of the world.’
In Omba, Lepers’ Island, the Huqe is in full vig’our ; a
gam all is a necessity for a man to eat in, if there be' but
a single dwelling-house. There are not many ranks and
ovens ; a Lepers’ Island gamali appears to a visitor from the
Banks’ Islands short and lofty. There are but four ranks in
the society, and therefore but four divisions, diringi, in the
gamali; the lowest the toa, the fowl; the second moli; the
third levusi, meaning many; the highest vire, which means
having fruited or flowered. But there are more ovens than
one for each rank, and the member has to eat his way up
through them before he can pass to the next division. So
there are in one gamali five ovens for moli, and two for levusi.
When a man has reached the highest rank of vire he can go
on with it, making another feast and taking another name as
often as he pleases, becoming every time a greater man. The
lowest step does not confer a title, but a new name is assumed
with the higher ranks, shewing the rank. These names,
however, are not commonly used ; no one, for example, calls
Tangamben Ulolimbembe, Moli-butterfly, the name belonging
to his Moli rank ; but the number of names is great which
belong to a man who has passed through all ranks and become
many times a Vire. Age has nothing to do with entrance
into the society, or with rising in the ranks ; it is merely a
matter of giving pigs and mats, which serve for money.
There is nothing whatever of initiation ; all males, except very
little boys, are members and eat in the gamali. Their friends
help the boys at first; but it is the great aim of all to rise
and gain social position. A boy has a fowl, toa, given him to
start in life, and a fowl buys him his first step, the toa ; his
fowls multiply, and he changes some of them for a young
sow; so his property increases, and as he grows richer he
desires to take each further step. The higher ranks of the
Kuqe give much power and authority, because those who have
reached them can always keep back those who wish to rise,
1Societies or Chibs.
[CH.
114
and the good-will of each one of them has to be secured.
There is less strictness than in the Banks’ Islands in the rule
which keeps each man to his own oven ; one can descend
from his own above and eat in a lower division, and if one
should encroach on the place above him he would suffer only
a fine of pigs. There is the same system of entrance as in the
Banks’ Islands, by which a patron introduces the new member
and makes his luqe for him, gifts which are to a considerable
extent reciprocal. The patron is properly one of the same
family division, the uncle on the mother’s side, or the brother.
Thus, in the case of a boy whose rich father bought him up at
once in early childhood to the rank of moti, the first step was
to give a pig to the members of the boy’s waivung, as an
acknowledgment that he was intruding on their province,
that the patriarchal was intruding on the matriarchal system.
Afterwards his father gave him a pig, with which a feast was
made in his name, and each person who took a piece of the
pig gave a mat in return ; the man who took the head gave
a mat a hundred fathoms long. Of these mats the boy gave
his father fifty in return for the pig. Then he gave mats, or
they were given in his name, to the moti whom he was to join ;
and when he first went to eat at their oven they made a
little feast for him. His friends on his mother’s side gave in
his name a pig to his father, and made him a feast.
At Whitsuntide Island, Araga, the word Loti takes the
place of Suqe, but the thing is the same. All the male
population are in fact members of the society ; wherever
there is a dwelling-house, there is also a gamal. The divisions
with the ovens, matan gall, are twelve; (1) ma langgelu,
the stage of youth; (2) gall liv Zangvulu, the oven of ten
tusks; (3) ma votu; (4) gall rara, the oven of the ery-
thrina leaf, which is the badge of the rank; (5) vocla, the
stone-wall seat by the front of the gamal, on which no
one below this rank may sit. These five are the inferior
steps which fathers see that their boys take as soon as
possible, and as quickly as they can afford to buy them up.
Though the lowest is nominally that of grown youths, novi.] New Hebrides. Whitsuntide Island. 115
child is too young to be admitted for whom the father, or
more properly the mother’s brother, provides the entrance
payments and presents of pigs and mats. Here, too, though
in principle the mother’s kin should take charge of the hoy's
advancement, the father in practice generally makes it his
own business. The sixth step, moli, is the first that is
important; the youth takes the great loti, ma loti gaivua, and
assumes a name with the prefix Moli. There are three steps
of moli. The ninth rank is v.du, the tenth nggarae, the eleventh
livusi, the last vira. The patron, or father, of the new moli
gives him when he attains that rank some of that white and
beautiful shell-money, which, however, is not used as money,
but is much valued for ornament. This is worth many pigs,
and is worn on the arm or wrist in the string, or woven
into an armlet. These family jewels remain as heirlooms, and
are made up afresh for the successive wearers. Internal
discipline is severe; one who should intrude into the division
of the gamal above his own would he clubbed or shot. To rise
to the higher moli and the steps beyond is the ambition of
every young man, and his friends are bound to help him ; for
this sacrifices are made, and mana sought from Tagar. For
gaining new steps in rank many pigs are wanted, many mats,
abundant supplies of food; such things come to the man
supematurally, he must have mana. The Vira is seldom
reached; the man of that rank, like ^ iradoro now. is in fact
the chief; he has great mana and the favour of Tagar, or he
could not have risen to be what he is ; his authority is para-
mount in the Loli, for none can rise without his consent, and
every one is a member of the society and hopes to rise; he
has been fortunate in war, or he would not have survived ;
he comes of a family of rich and leading men who bought his
first steps when he was a child, and by whose wealth he has
bought the higher; he is the great man, the Eatahigi.CHAPTER VII.
RELIGION.
The religion of the Melanesians is the expression of their
conception of the supernatural, and embraces a very wide range
of beliefs and practices, the limits of which it would be very
difficult to define. It is equally difficult to ascertain with
precision what these beliefs are. The ideas of the natives are
not clear upon many points, they are not accustomed to present
them in any systematic form among themselves. An observer
who should set himself the task of making systematic enquiries,
must find himself baffled at the outset by the multiplicity of
the languages with which he has to deal. Suppose him to
have as a medium of communication a language which he and
those from whom he seeks information can use freely for the
ordinary purposes of life, he finds that to fail when he seeks
to know what is the real meaning of those expressions which
his informant must needs use in his own tongue, because he
knows no equivalent for them in the common language which
is employed. Or if he gives what he supposes to be an equi-
valent, it will often happen that he and the enquirer do not
understand that word in the same sense. A missionary has
his own difficulty in the fact that very much of his com-
munication is with the young, who do not themselves know
and understand very much of what their elders believe and
practice. Converts are disposed to blacken generally and
indiscriminately their own former state, and with greater zeal
the present practices of others. There are some things they
are really ashamed to speak of; and there are others whichDifficulties.	11 7
they think they ought to consider wrong, because they are
associated in their memory with what they know to he really
had. Many a native Christian will roundly condemn native
songs and dances, who, when questions begin to clear his
mind, acknowledges that some dances are quite innocent,
explains that none that he knows have any religious significance
whatever, says that many songs also have nothing whatever had
in them, and writes out one or two as examples. Natives who
are still heathen will speak with reserve of what still retains
with them a sacred character, and a considerate missionary will
respect such reserve ; if he should not respect it the native may
very likely fail in his respect for him, and amuse himself at his
expense. Few missionaries have time to make systematic
enquiries ; if they do, they are likely to make them too soon,
and for the whole of their after-career make whatever they
observe fit into their early scheme of the native religion.
Often missionaries, it is to be feared, so manage it that neither
they nor the first generation of their converts really know
what the old religion of the native people was. There is
always with missionaries the difficulty of language;.a man
may speak a native language every day for years and have
reason to believe he speaks it well, but it will argue ill for his
real acquaintance with it if he does not find out that he makes
mistakes. Resident traders, if observant, are free from some
of a missionary’s difficulties ; but they have their own. The
‘ pigeon English,’ which is sure to come in, carries its own
deceits ; ‘ plenty devil ’ serves to convey much information ; a
chief’s grave is ‘ devil stones,’ the dancing ground of a village
is a 1 devil ground,’ the drums are idols, a dancing club is
a ‘ devil stick V The most intelligent travellers and naval
1 It may be asserted with confidence that a belief in a devil, that is of an
evil spirit, has no place whatever in the native Melanesian mind. The word
has certainly not been introduced in the Solomon or Banks’ Islands by
missionaries, who in those groups have never used the word devil. Yet most
unfortunately it has come to pass that the religious beliefs of European traders
have been conveyed to the natives in the word ‘ devil,’ which they use without
knowing what it means. It is much to be wished that educated Europeans
would not use the word so loosely as they do.118
[CH.
Religion.
officers pass their short period of observation in this atmosphere
of confusion. Besides, every one, missionary and visitor, carries
with him some preconceived ideas; he expects to see idols,
and he sees them; images are labelled idols in museums whose
makers carved them for amusement; a Solomon islander
fashions the head of his lime-box stick into a grotesque figure,
and it becomes the subject of a woodcut as ‘ a Solomon Island
god.’ It is extremely difficult for any one to begin enquiries
without some prepossessions, which, even if he can com-
municate with the natives in their own language, affect his
conception of the meaning of the answers he receives. The
questions he puts guide the native to the answer he thinks
he ought to give. The native, with very vague beliefs and
notions floating in cloudy solution in his mind, finds in the
questions of the European a thread on which these will preci-
pitate themselves, and, without any intention to deceive,
avails himself of the opportunity to clear his own mind while
he satisfies the questioner.
Some such statement as this of the difficulties in the way
of a certain knowledge of the subject is a necessary intro-
duction to the account which is given here of the religion
of the Melanesians ; and it is desirable that the writer should
disclaim pretension to accuracy or completeness. The general
view which is presented must he taken with the particular
examples of Melanesian belief and customs in matters of
religion which follow.
(i) The Melanesian mind is entirely possessed by the belief
in a supernatural power or influence, called almost universally
mana1. This is what works to effect everything which is
1 Professor Max Miiller, in his Hibbert Lectures of 1878, did me the honour
of quoting the following words from a letter. 1 The religion of the Melanesians
consists, as far as belief goes, in the persuasion that there is a supernatural
power about belonging to the region of the unseen ; and, as far as practice goes,
in the use of means of getting this power turned to their own benefit. The
notion of a Supreme Being is altogether foreign to them, or indeed of any being
occupying a very elevated place in their world. . . There is a belief in a force
altogether distinct from physical power, which acts in all kinds of ways for
good and evil, and which it is of the greatest advantage to possess or control.VII.]
' Mana'.
119
beyond the ordinary power of men, outside the common
processes of nature; it is present in the atmosphere of life,
attaches itself to persons and to things, and is manifested
by results which can only be ascribed to its operation.
When one has got it he can use it and direct it, but its
force may break forth at some new point; the presence of it
is ascertained by proof. A man comes by chance upon a
stone which takes his fancy; its shape is singular, it is like
something, it is certainly not a common stone, there must be
mana in it. So he argues with himself, and he puts it to the
proof; he lays it at the root of a tree to the fruit of which it
has a certain resemblance, or he buries it in the ground when
he plants his garden ; an abundant crop on the tree or in the
garden shews that he is right, the stone is mana J, has that
power in it. Having that power it is a vehicle to convey
mana to other stones. In the same way certain forms of
words, generally in the form of a song, have power for certain
purposes ; a charm of words is called a mana. But this power,
though itself impersonal, is always connected with some person
who directs it; all spirits have it, ghosts generally, some men.
If a stone is found to have a supernatural power, it is because
a spirit has associated itself with it; a dead man’s bone has
This is Mana. The word is common 1 believe to the whole Pacific, and people
have tried very hard to describe what it is in different regions. I think I know
what our people mean by it, and that meaning seems to me to cover all that I
hear about it elsewhere. It is a power or influence, not physical, and in a way
supernatural; but it shews itself in physical force, or in any kind of power or
excellence which a man possesses. This Mana is not fixed in anything, and
can be conveyed in almost anything ; but spirits, whether disembodied souls or
supernatural beings, have it and can impart it; and it essentially belongs to
personal beings to originate it, though it may act through the medium of water,
or a stone, or a bone. All Melanesian religion consists, in fact, in getting this
Mana for one’s self, or getting it used for one’s benefit—all religion, that is, as
far as religious practices go, prayers and sacrifices.’
1 The word mana is both a noun substantive and a verb ; a transitive form
of the verb, manag, manahi, manangi, means to impart mana, or to influence
with it. An object in which mana resides, and a spirit which naturally has
mana, is said to be mana, with the use of the verb; a man has mana, but
cannot properly be said to be mana.120
[CH.
Religion.
with it mana, because the ghost is with the hone ; a man may
have so close a connexion with a spirit or ghost that he has
mana in himself also, and can so direct it as to effect what he
desires; a charm is powerful because the name of a spirit or
ghost expressed in the form of words brings into it the power
which the ghost or spirit exercises through it. Thus all
conspicuous success is a proof that a man has mana; his
influence depends on the impression made on the people’s
mind that he has it; he becomes a chief by virtue of it.
Hence a man’s power, though political or social in its cha-
racter, is his mana ; the word is naturally used in accordance
with the native conception of the character of all power arid"
influence as supernatural. If a man has been successful in
fighting, it has not been his natural strength of arm, quickness
of eye, or readiness of resource that has won success; he has
certainly got the mana of a spirit or of some deceased warrior
to empower him, conveyed in an amulet of a stone round his
neck, or a’tuft of leaves in his belt, in a tooth hung upon a
finger of his bow hand, or in the form of words with which he
brings supernatural assistance to his side. If a man’s pigs
multiply, and his gardens are productive, it is not because he
is industrious and looks after his property, but because of the
stones full of mana for pigs and yams that he possesses. Of
course a yam naturally grows when planted, that is well
known, but it will not be very large unless mana comes into
play; a canoe will not be swift unless mana be brought to
bear upon it, a net will not catch many fish, nor an arrow
inflict a mortal wound.
(2) The Melanesians believe in the existence of beings
personal, intelligent, full of mana, with a certain bodily form
which is visible but not fleshly like the bodies of men. These
they think to be more or less actively concerned in the
affairs of men, and they invoke and otherwise approach them.
These may be called spirits ; but it is most important to
distinguish between spirits who are beings of an order
higher than mankind, and the disembodied spirits of men,
which have become in the vulgar sense of the word ghosts.VII.]
I 21
Spirits and Ghosts.
From the neglect of this distinction great confusion and
misunderstanding arises; and it is much to be desired that
missionaries at any rate would carefully observe the dis-
tinction. Any personal object of worship among natives in
all parts of the world is taken by the European observer
to be a spirit or a god, or a devil; but among Melanesians
at any rate it is very common to invoke departed relatives
and friends, and to use religious rites addressed to them. A
man therefore who is approaching with some rite his dead
father, whose spirit he believes to be existing and pleased
with his pious action, is thought to be worshipping a false
god or deceiving spirit, and very probably is told that the
being he worships does not exist. The perplexed native
hears with one ear that, there is no such thing as that
departed spirit of a man which he venerates as a ghost but
his instructor takes to be a god, and with the other that the
soul never dies, and that, his own spiritual interests are para-
mount and eternal. They themselves make a clear distinction
between the existing, conscious, powerful, disembodied spirits
of the dead, and other spiritual beings that never have been
men at all. It is true that the two orders of beings get
confused in native language and thought, but their confu-
sion begins at one end and the confusion of their visitors
at another ; they think so much and constantly of ghosts
that they speak of beings who were never men as ghosts ;
Europeans take the spirits of the lately dead for gods ; less
educated Europeans call them roundly devils. All Mela-
nesians, as far as my acquaintance with them extends, believe
in the existence both of spirits that never were men, and of
ghosts which are the disembodied souls of men deceased: to
preserve as far as possible this distinction, the supernatural
beings that were never in a human body are here called
spirits, men’s spirits that have left the body are called ghosts h
1 The Melanesian Mission, under the guidance of Bishop Patteson, has used
in all the islands the English word God. He considered the enormous difficulty,
if not impossibility, of finding an adequate native expression in any one
language, and further the very narrow limits within which such a word if it122	Religion.	[ch.
There is, however, a very remarkable difference between the
natives of the New Hebrides and Banks’ Islands to the east,
and the natives of the Solomon Islands to the west; the
direction of the religious ideas and practices of the former is
towards spirits rather than ghosts, the latter pay very little
attention to spirits and address themselves almost wholly to
ghosts. This goes with a much greater development of a
sacrificial system in the west than in the east; and goes
along" also with a certain advance in the arts of life. Enough is
hardly known of the Santa Cruz people, who lie between, to
speak with certainty, but they appear to range themselves, as
they rather do geographically, on the side of the Solomon
Islands. In Fiji it is the established custom to call the objects
of the old worship gods; but Mr. Fison was ‘ inclined to
think all the spiritual beings of Fiji, including the gods, simply
the Mota tamale', i.e. ghosts; and the words of Mr. Hazel-
wood, quoted by Mr. Brenchley (Cruise of the Curagoa, p. 181),
confirm this view. Tuikilakila told one of the first mission-
aries how he proposed to treat him. 1 If you die first,’ said he,
‘ I shall make you my god.’ And the same Tuikilakila would
sometimes say of himself, 11 am a god.’ It is added that he
believed it too; and his belief was surely correct- For it
should be observed that the chief never said he was or should
be a god, in English, but that he was or should be a kalon,
in Fijian, and a kalon he no doubt became; that is to say, on
his decease his departed spirit was invoked and worshipped
as he knew it would be. He used no verb ‘ am’ or ‘ shall be ’;
said only ‘ I a kalcm.’ In Fiji also this worship of the dead,
rather than of beings that never were in the flesh, accom-
panies a more considerable advance in the arts of life than is
found in, for example, the Banks’ Islands. It is plain that
the natives of the southern islands of the New Hebrides,
though they are said to worship ‘ gods,’ believe in the
existence and power of spirits other than the disembodied
could be found must be used, since the languages are at least as many as the
islands. It is difficult to convey by description the ideas which ought to attach
to the new word, but at least nothing erroneous is connoted by it.vii.]	Misuse of Terms. Spirits.	123
spirits of the dead, as well as of the ghosts of men. When, a
missionary visitor to Anaiteum reported that the people ‘ lived
under the most abject bondage to their Natmases,’ and called
these ‘ gods.’ he was evidently speaking of the ghosts, the
Natmat of the Banks’ Islands, for the word is no doubt the
same. The belief in other spirits not ghosts of the dead,
appears equally clear in the account given of the sacred stones
and places, which correspond to those of the northern islands
of the same group, and in the ‘ minor deities ’ said to be the
progeny of Nugerain, and called ‘ gods of the sea, of the land,
of mountains and valleys,’ who represent the wui of Lepers’
Island and Araga. There does not appear to be anywhere
in Melanesia a belief in a spirit which animates any natural
object, a tree, waterfall, storm or rock, so as to be to it
what the soul is believed to be to the body of a man.
Europeans it is true speak of the spirits of the sea or of the
storm or of the forest; but the native idea which they
represent is that ghosts haunt the sea and the forest, having
power to raise storms and to strike a traveller with disease,
or that supernatural beings never men do the same. It
may be said, then, that Melanesian religion divides the people
into two groups; one, where, with an accompanying belief in
spirits never men, worship is directed to the ghosts of the
dead, as in the Solomon Islands ; the other, where both ghosts
and spirits have an important place, but the spirits have more
worship than the ghosts, as is the case in the New Hebrides
and in the Banks’ Islands.
(3) In the Banks’ Islands a spirit is called a vui, and is
thus described by a native who was exhorted to give as far as
possible the original notion conveyed among the old people by
the word, and gave his definition after considerable re-
flection :—‘ What is a vui ? It lives, thinks, has more
intelligence than a man ; knows things which are secret
without seeing; is supernaturally powerful with maria ; has
no form to be seen ; has no soul, because itself is like a soul.’
But though the true conception of a vui represents it as in-
corporeal, the stories about the vui who have names treat124
[CH.
Religion.
them as if they were men possessed of supernatural power.
The wui of the Northern New Hebrides are the same. In
the Solomon Islands it is difficult to get any definition of a
spirit except that there are beings which were never men,
and have not the bodily nature of a man. In San Cristoval
such a being is called Fujona or Hi'ona. Such was Ivahausi-
bware, a female, and a snake. The name hi’ona is known in
Malanta also, but used with no very clear application; they
believe there also in urehi, not living men, nor the ghosts of
dead men, that haunt big trees in the forest and snatch
away the souls of men. These are seen like ghosts, but are
not sacrificed to or invoked. The name vigoua is known also
at Florida, and is applied to beings whose power exercises
itself in storms, rain, drought, calms, and in the growth of
food; but these the natives decline to admit to be simple
spirits, thinking they must once have been men ; and doubt-
less some so called were men not long ago. One being only
is asserted there to be superhuman, never alive with a mere
human life, and therefore not now a ghost; one that now
receives no worship, but is the subject of stories only, without
any religious consideration. This is Koevasi, a female. How
she came into existence no one knows ; she made things of all
kinds ; she became herself the mother of a woman from whom
the people of the island descend. She was the author of death
by resuming her cast-off skin ; she was the originator of the
varying dialects of the islands round; for having started on
a voyage she was seized with ague, and shook so much that
her utterance was confused. Wherever she landed the people
caught from her an almost unintelligible speech. The chill
of this ague remains in the river Kakambona in Laudari,
Guadalcanal-; Koevasi washed in it, and the water is now so
cold that to wade into it makes one ill.
These spirits, such as they are, have no position in the
religion of the Solomon Islands ; the ghosts, the disembodied
spirits of the dead, are objects of worship; the tindalo of
Florida, tifladho of Ysabel, tindalo of Guadalcanal-, Ho'a of Saa,
’ataro of San Cristoval. But it must not be supposed that everyvii.]	Ghosts of Worship. Example.	125
ghost becomes an object of worship. A man in danger may
call upon his father, his grandfather, or his uncle ; his near-
ness of kin is sufficient ground for it. The ghost who is to
be worshipped is the spirit of a man who in his lifetime had
mam in him ; the souls of common men are the common herd
of ghosts, nobodies alike before and after death. The super-
natural power abiding in the powerful living man abides in
his ghost after death, with increased vigour and more ease of
movement. After his death, therefore, it is expected that he
should begin to work, and some one will come forward and claim
particular acquaintance with the ghost; if his power should
shew itself, his position is assured as one worthy to be in-
voked, and to receive offerings, till his cultus gives way
before the rising importance of one newly dead, and the
sacred place where his shrine once stood and his relics were
preserved is the only memorial of him that remains; if no
proof of his activity appears, he sinks into oblivion at once.
An admirable example of the establishment of the worship
of a tinclalo in Florida is given in the story of' Ganindo,
for which I am indebted to Bishop Selwyn. There was a
gathering of men at Honggo to go on a head-hunting
expedition under the leading of Kulanikama the chief
(himself afterwards a ghost of worship), and Ganindo was
their great fighting man. They went to attack Gaeta, and
Lumba of Gaeta shot Ganindo near the collar-bone with an
arrow. Having failed in their purpose they returned to
Honggo, and said they, ‘our friend is dead.’ But as he still
lived they took him over to Nggaombata in Guadalcanar,
brought him back again, and put him on the hill Bonipari,
where he died and was buried. Then they took his head,
wove a basket for it, and built a house for it, and they said he
was a tinclalo. ‘ Let us go and take heads,’ said they ; so they
made an expedition. As they went they ceased paddling in a
quiet place and waited till they felt their canoe rock under
them ; then said they, ‘ Here is a tinclalo.’ To find out who
he was they called the names of tinclalos, and when they
called the name of Ganindo the canoe shook again. I11 theReligion.
i 26
[ch.
same way thoy learnt wliat village they were to attack.
Returning successful, they threw a spear into the roof of
Ganindo’s house, Mow concha, ami (lanced around it crying,
‘Our lindalo iH strong to kill.’ ’J'lien they sacrificed to him,
lisli and food. Then they built him a new house, and made
four images for the four corners, one of Oanindo himself, two
of liia sisters, and another. Then, when ei^ht men had
carried up the rid^e covering for the house, eif>ht men
translated the relies to the shrine. One carried the bones
of Ganindo, another his betel-nuts, another his lime-box,
another his shell trumpet. They all went in crouching, a-s if
under a heavy weight1, and sinyin^ slowly, ‘ Ma-i-i, ma-i-i,ka
xaka Lva, hither, hither, let us lift the !<■<>■; ’ the eiff'ht log's
were lifted together, and ag’ain they chanted ‘ma-i-i, ma-i-i,'
and at the last mai the eight legs went down together. Witli
this solemn procession the relies were set upon a bamboo
platform, and sacrifices to the new keramo wore begun ; by
Nisi lirst, then by Satani, then by llogoni, the last, at whose
death some four years afro the aacrificea ccaaed, and the shrine
fell to ruin before the advance of Christian teaching. To the
natives of Florida this Ganindo was a Liwlalo, a ghost of
worship, a keramo, a ghost powerful for war; he wo>ild bo
sjioken of now by some Europeans as a god, by "others as a
devil, and tlu; pigeon-Fnglish speaking natives now, who
think that‘devil’ is the Fnglish for LiMalo, would iiho the
same word. The belief iif Florida and the neighbouring parts
is fixed that every Lindalo was once a man ; yet some whose
names are known to everyone, Daula and I fauri, associated
respectively with the frigate-bird and the shark, have passed
far away from any historical remembrance; Daula, indeed,
under the name of Kaula 2, is venerated at Ulawa. Some
also of the keramo, the Lindalo of fighting', are known in
Morida not lo have been men of the island, but famous
warriors of the western islands, where mana they think is
1 ’Hiii weight of maun, an in the palalco logs, page 10H.
‘ An the Morida dale, child, in in (Jlawa leak, and Wango ’nlaro is Saa
’alcalo.VII.]
127
Prayers and Offerings.
stronger ; who have only been known, and that of late years,
in Florida in their spiritual state and power, but never in
human form. At any rate the objects of religious worship
are all tindalo ; and every linclalo was once a man.
(4) Taking the islands of Melanesia, as many of them as
come here into view, as a whole, it is found that Prayers
and Offerings are made everywhere to spirits, to ghosts, or to
both. The prayers are perhaps in some cases constraining
charms, are certainly often forms of words believed to be ac-
ceptable to the being addressed, and known only to those who
have special access to him. But there are also natural calls
for help in danger and distress. The offerings or sacrifices,
whether made to spirits or to ghosts, and differing a good
deal in eastern and western islands, have various motives.
Some are propitiatory, substituting an animal for the person
who has offended ; some deprecatory; some arc offered to con-
ciliate and gratify with a view to gain; some only to shew
proper attention and respect or even affection ; but the notion
of propitiation is not at all commonly j ire sent. There is no
priestly order, and no persons who can properly be called
priests. Any man can have access to some object of worship,
and most men in fact do have it, either by discovery of their
own or by knowledge imparted to them by those who have
before employed it. If the object of worship, as in some sacri-
fices, is one common to the members of a community, the man
who knows howto approach that object is in away their priest
and sacrifices for them all; but it is in respect of that par-
ticular function only that I10 has a sacred character; and it is
very much by virtue of that function that a man is a chief, and
not at all because he is chief that he performs the sacrifice.
W omen and children generally are excluded from religious
rites. In close connexion with religious observances come
the various practices of magic and witchcraft, of doctoring
and weather-doctoring; for all is done by the aid of ghosts
and spirits.CHAPTER VIII.
SACRIFICES.
The simplest and most common sacrificial act is that of
throwing a small portion of food to the dead ; this is probably
a universal practice in Melanesia. A fragment of food ready
to be eaten, of yam, a leaf of mallow, a bit of betel-nut, is
thrown aside, and, where they drink kava, a libation is made
of a few drops, as the share of departed friends, or as a
memorial of them with which they will be gratified. This is
done perhaps with the calling of the name of some one
recently deceased or particularly in remembrance at the time,
or else with a general regard to the ghosts of former members
of the community. It is hardly thought that this becomes in
fact the food of the departed, but somehow it is to their
advantage, at any rate it pleases them. At the same time
the living friends like to feel and shew remembrance of the
dead who have sat with them around the oven ; and it is an
opportunity of getting help from ghostly power, for which
prayer is made. In the New Hebrides and Banks’ Islands
this domestic rite has not, so far as my knowledge goes,
developed into any formal sacrifice, as it has in the Solomon
Islands; for it may be surely thought that the sacrifices of
the latter islands have had their origin in such offerings to
the dead. To place food on a burial-place or before some
memorial image is common ; and to do this is to offer a kind
of sacrifice, even if as in Santa Cruz the offering is soon taken
away and eaten. But the natives do not call either of these
offerings a sacrifice, do not use for either the words for whichSolomon Island Sacrifice.	129
in English no other translation can be found. The sacrifices,
in the more restricted sense, of the Solomon Islands are
widely different from those of the New Hebrides and Banks’
Islands; in the western islands the offerings are made to
ghosts, and consumed by fire as well as eaten; in the eastern
islands they are made to spirits, and there is no sacrificial
fire or meal. In the former nothing is offered but food, in
the latter money has a conspicuous place.
(1) A Solomon Island sacrifice has been excellently de-
scribed by a native of San Cristoval. ‘ In my country,’ he
wrote, ‘ they think that ghosts are many, very many indeed,
some very powerful, and some not. There is one who is
principal in war; this one is truly mighty and strong, When
our people wish to fight with any other place, the chief men
of the village and the sacrificers and the old men, and the
elder and younger men, assemble in the place sacred to this
ghost; and his name is Harumae. When they are thus
assembled to sacrifice, the chief sacrificer goes and takes a
pig-; and if it be not a barrow pig they would not sacrifice it
to that ghost, he would reject it and not eat of it. The pig
is killed (it is strangled), not by the chief sacrificer, but by
those whom he chooses to assist, near the sacred place. Then
they cut it up ; they take great care of the blood lest it should
fall upon the ground; they bring a bowl and set the pig
in it, and when they cut it up the blood runs down into it.
W'hen the cutting up is finished, the chief sacrificer takes a
bit of flesh from the pig, and he takes a cocoa-nut shell and
dips up some of the blood. Then he takes the blood and
the bit of flesh and enters into the house (the shrine), and
calls that ghost and says, “ Harumae! Chief in war! we
sacrifice to you with this pig, that you may help us to smite
that place ; and whatsoever we shall carry away shall be your
property, and we also will be yours.” Then he burns the bit
of flesh in a fire upon a stone, and pours down the blood upon
the fire. Then the fire blazes greatly upwards to the roof,
and the house is full of the smell of pig, a sign that the
ghost has heard. But when the sacrificer went in he did not
K130
[CH.
Sacrifices.
go boldly, but with awe; and this is the sign of it; as he
goes into the holy house he puts away his bag1, and washes
bis hands thoroughly, to shew that the ghost shall not
reject him with disgust; just as when you go into the really
Holy House you take oil'your hat from your head, a sign that
you reverenco the true Spirit.’ The pig was afterwards eaten
by the worshippers. To sacrifice in this way is called /wan,
the ghost to whom the sacrifice is made ’a/aro. It should
bo observed that Ifarumao had not been dead many years
when this account was written, the elder men remembered
him alive; nor was he a great fighting man, but a kind and
generous man, thought to have much mana. His shrine was
a small house in the village, in which relics of him were kept.
No one since his time had died whom the people thought
worthy of such worship; had it been so Harumae would have
been neglected.
In Florida, as has been said, tho objects of worship are
tindalo, to whom the food consumed in the fire is offered as
their portion. Some are commonly known by name, others
are known oidy to one man and another who has found out
or been taught how to approach them, and calls each tindalo
his own, narjana. Wo are concerned here with sacrifices ; public,
as offered to a well-known tindalo, powerful in such things as
concern the general well-being ; and private, offered by indi-
viduals to the tindalo of whom they have particular knowledge1.
In every village there was the tindalo accepted at the time,
and the chief was the sacrificer. lie had received from his
predecessor the knowledge how to ‘ throw ’ the sacrifice to this
tindalo, and he imparted this knowledge to his son or nephew,
whom he designed to leave as his successor. The place of
sacrifice was near the village, an ancient one or newly made,
according to the time in which this tindalo had been in vogue,
an enclosure with a little house or shrine in which relics were
1 The word for which 1 Facrifice * in lined as equivalent in in Florida nukatji,
in Ihigotn of YHftbol huviigaiji. The Haerificor aacrificea with the offering to the
tindalo in or at the place of sacrifice, na mane Hulcagi to nia nukatji na hauu
vania na tindalo la na malei ni /mlcatji.VIII.]
Florida Sacrifice.	131
preserved. When a public sacrifice was performed the people
of the place assembled, boys but not women being present,
near but not in the sacred place. Food is prepared, but not
eaten till the sacrifice has been offered. The sacrifice!- alone
enters the sacred place or shrine, and takes to it his son. or the
person he has instructed. He makes a tire of small sticks,
muttering words of mana. but he must not blow it. He takes
some of the prepared food in a basket lined with dracaena
leaves and others peculiar to this tindalo, some mash of yam
or something of that kind; part of this he throws upon the
fire, calling the name of the tindalo, and the names of others
with it : he tells him to take his food, and makes petition for
whatever is desired. The fire blazes up. a favourable sign that
the tindalo are present and blow the fire ; the bit of food is
consumedl. What remains the sacriricer takes back to the
assembly and eats, giving some of it to his assistant. Then
the people receive from him their portions of the food prepared,
and eat it or take it away. While the sacrificing is going on
there is a solemn silence. If a pig is killed on the occasion,
the heart in Florida, at Bugotu the gullet, is burnt upon the
sacrificial fire. One tindalo commonly known, whose worship
is not local, is Manoga. At sacrifices offered to him little boys
are present, and sometimes even women partake of the sacri-
ficial food. ‘ He who throws the sacrifice when he invokes
this tindalo heaves the offering round about, and calls him;
first to the east, where rises the sun. saying, If thou dwellest in
the east, where rises the sun. Manoga 1 come hither and eat
thv tutu mash! Then turning he lifts it towards where sets
the sun, and says. If thou dwellest in the west, where sets the
sun. Manoga ! come hither and eat thy tutu! There is not a
quarter towards which he does not lift it up. And when he
has finished lifting it he says, If thou dwellest in heaven above,
Manoga! come hither and eat thy tutu ! If thou dwellest in
Burn or Hagetolu, the Pleiades or Orion s belt: it below in
' It is denied that the food has a spirit. faruHHi, corresponding to the
tuning a winch is the soul of a man; but the food offered is tarungaga vwith
the adjectival termination), * has a spiritual character.
K 2132
[CH.
Sacrifices.
Turivatu; if in the distant sea; if on high in the sun, or in
the moon ; if thou dwellest inland or by the shore, Manoga!
come hither and eat thy tutu! ’ This Manoga belongs parti-
cularly to the Manukama or Lalii division of the Florida people,
each division, kema, having a tinclalo whom they worship as
peculiarly their own, and whom they vaguely call their
ancestor; Polika of the Nggaombata, Barego of the Kakau,
Kuma of the Ilonggokama, Sisiro of the Himbo, Tinclalo tambu,
whose personal name is not known, of the Honggokiki. As
these divisions are intermixed in the villages, though one is
generally more largely represented in any one of them than
the others, sacrifices are offered in each village or group of
villages to each of these tinclalo of the divisions; and the
sacrificer is the man who knows the particular leaves and
creepers and species of dracaena, and ginger and shavings of a
tree, and words of mana with which the tinclalo is approached,
knowledge which he has received from his predecessors. The
sacrificer then of the dominant family division of the place is
in fact the ostensible chief, the sacrifices of the less numerous
divisions are minor chiefs. With the worship of these tinclalo
of larger and wider cultus is combined by the sacrificer that of
lesser and more private keramo of fighting whom he knows.
The local tinclalo at the time in vogue, such as Ganindo,
occupies a middle place between the general and particular
objects of sacrificial worship. There are also the tinclalo known
to every one, who are particularly powerful in certain spheres,
as Daula in the sea, and Pelu, one of the vicjona, in gardens,
and Hauri in fighting; but only those who know the proper-
way to approach them can sacrifice to them before a voyage or
planting or a fight.
There were two general sacrifices in the year, in which the
people of a village took part. The first, the bigo, was when
the canarium nut, ngali, so much used in native cookery,
was ripe h None could be eaten till the sacrifice of the first-
fruits was offered. The knowledge of the way to do this, and
1 This sacrifice is described by Mr. Woodford (p. 26). In that part of
Guadalcanal where l is dropped in many words, tinclalo becomes tindao.viii.] Florida First-fruits. Private Sacrifices. 133
the consequent authority to open the season, was handed down
with the knowledge of the tinilalo concerned. The man who
has the knowledge observes the time, and some day in the
early morning he is heard to shout. lie climbs a tree, gets
some nuts, cracks them, eats, and puts some on the stones in
his sacred place for the tindalo. Then the people generally
can gather for themselves; the chief sacrifices with food in
which the new nuts are mixed on the stones of the village
sanctuary; each man who has a tindalo does the same in his
own sacred place. About two months after this there is
another general sacrifice called the sulcagi karango, when the
food generally has been dug; a man who digs up his yams, or
gets in whatever harvest he has, makes his private sacrifice
besides. At the general sacrifice pig or fish is offered.
The private sacrifices of individuals are offered in the same
way. A man has gained for himself, or had imparted to him,
the knowledge of the leaves and bark and vines that some
tindalo delights in, and with these he approaches him in the
sacred place, vunutha, which is his own, and offers to him to
keep himself in favour or to obtain something from him.
There he invokes his familiar tindalo, joining with him some
others, and offers in the fire his bit of food. A man will
commonly have his keramo, a tindalo of killing, who will help
him in fighting or in slaying his private enemy. He will
pull up his ginger-plant, and judge from the ease with which
it comes out of the earth whether he shall succeed or not; he
will make his sacrifice, and with the ginger and leaves on
his shield and in his belt and right armlet will go to fight.
He cru'ses his enemy by his keramo, ‘ Siria eats thee, and I
shall slay thee and if he kills him, he cries, ‘Thine is this
man, Siria! and do thou give me niana! Manslaughter
without the help of a tindalo would be dangerous to the
manslayer ; the slain man’s ghost would have power over him
unless the mana of the keramo, a stronger ghost, were on his
side. In case of failure the ghostly power on the enemy’s
side has been shewn to have the greater strength. A man
must needs have his keramo, even if he had to buy one; ifJ34
[CH.
Sacrifices.
what his father or uncle taught and gave him did not succeed
he tried another. A relic of the Jceramo (himself hut lately a
fighting man), a tooth or some hair in a little hag, was hung
round the neck ; or the contents of the bag might he only a
stone. These amulets, bomboso, were kept in the house, and
were called a man’s Iceramo, just as relics were called tindalo.
The vigona, as has been said, have influence over weather and
in gardens. If a man himself knows one he can operate for
himself, otherwise he pays a mane nggehe vigona to do it for him.
Such a one goes into the middle of the garden with mashed
food in the palm of his left hand, and lie strikes it with his
right hand as he calls on his vigona to come and cat. He
says, ‘ This produce thou shalt eat; give mana to this g'arden,
that food may be good and plentiful.’ Ho digs holes at the
four corners, and buries the leaves proper to his vigona, to give
ghostly power to the garden, that it may he fruitful and to
guard it; stones are used for the same purpose. As the yams,
or pana, grow they arc twined with the special creeper and
fastened with the wood which the vigona loves. These tindalo
of the gardens must not be offended by the entrance of men
who have eaten pig’s flesh or fish, or the flesh of the kandora
cuscus, or shell-fish; three or four days after they have eaten
such things they may approach, the food offensive to the vigona
having left their stomachs the crop will not be hurt. When
the yam vines are being trained the men sleep near the
gardens, and never approach their wives ; should they do so
and tread the garden it would be spoilt. The man who has his
own vigona can bring his power to bear in doing damage
to another man’s garden, being either moved by his own
grudge or paid to do it; backed by his own vigona he offends
the vigona of the garden he designs to spoil by laying putrid
things there. If after this the crop is good, the first vigona
has been shewn to be stronger than the other. The names of
sixteen of these vigona are generally known. When the crop
is dug a portion of the fruits is burnt in sacrifice to the one
concerned.
Human sacrifices were occasionally made ; but there was noviii.]	Human Sacrifices.	135
sacrificial feast upon the flesh as when a pig was offered ; only
little bits were eaten by those who desired to get fighting
mana, by young men, and by elders for a special purpose.
Such sacrifices were thought more effectual than others, and
advantage was taken of a crime, or imputed crime, to take a
life and offer the man to some tindalo. So within the memory
of men still young, Dikea, the chief of llavu, condemned one
Gisukokovilo to death for stealing tobacco, and the grown lads
of Handika ate bits of him cooked in the sacrificial fire. The
same Dikea offered a human sacrifice in the year 1886. Two
calamities had fallen upon Dikea. One of his wives proved
false, and he sent her away, vowing that she should not return
till ho had sacrificed to Ifauri. Also his son had died, and he
made a vow that he would kill a man for him. Some thought
that he would kill a man to bury with the boy, but he did not.
He dug up his buried son that he might see him once more ;
and again, according to the common practice, he took up his
skull and set it in his sacred pdace. It was widely known
that Dikea had made his vow, and that he would pa]r well for
some one to kill. The Savo people had bought a captive boy
in Guadalcanal', lame and nearly blind, and him they brought
and sold to Dikea for twenty coils of money. The boy, igno-
rant of the language, did not know his fate. Dikea, laying his
hand on the victim’s breast, cried ‘ Hauri! here is a man for
you,’ and his followers killed him with clubs and axes. His
head was taken to set up with Dikea’s collection of skulls, his
legs were sent away to make known what had been done, but
none of him was eaten : ‘ So Dikea sacrificed to Hauri with
that boy.’ In Eugotu of Ysabel the sacrifices, havugagi, are
the same with those of Florida; only the dwellers along the
coast sacrificed human victims, and this practice they said, as
in Florida, had come to them from further west. When the
head of an enemy killed in a fight was brought in triumph,
bits were cut off and burnt in sacrifice. A captive would be
taken to the sacred place, the burial-place of the tindatho to
whom the sacrifice was to be made, and there bound hand and
foot. Then the men of the pdace, following the chief who led the[CH.
136	Sacrifices.
sacrifice, each beat him on the breast with their hands, calling
on the tindatho, and giving him the victim. This was enough
sometimes to cause death, otherwise they cut his. throat. Then
the sacrificer burnt a bit in the fire for the tindatho. Did the
men assembled eat of the sacrifice ? Bera, the principal chief,
at any rate used to do so till Wadrokal went there as a teacher;
he would cook an arm in the oven and eat it, having first
sacrificed with a portion. Only six years ago Soga at Mang-
gotu sacrificed a man. He accused some Bugotu visitors of
charming one of his own friends to death ; eight of them he
killed, but one he bound and took to the place where his
friend was buried; there he offered him to the ghost, now a
tindatho, of the man supposed to have been bewitched; but
he did not eat of the sacrifice. In these, however, and in the
lesser sacrifices, there is not commonly present the notion
of propitiation, nor perhaps of substitution. When, as in
the case of Dikea, misfortune is supposed to have followed on
some offence, the offended tindal-o is propitiated by the
sacrifice, and this is done in case of sickness. But generally
the object is rather to gain the favour and to retain the good
will of the disembodied spirit.
In Saa, near Cape Zelee in Malanta, there is found in some
sacrifices a distinct substitution of the victim for the person on
whose behalf the offering is made. The ghost of some departed
warrior or otherwise powerful man becomes a lid a ; that of a
warrior, if on experiment he is found to act, is like the keramo
of Florida, a ghost of battle or of killing, lio'a ui ma’e. The
names of many, as of recent chiefs, are generally known, but
some are known only to those who have learnt the means of
access to them. There is no one word used for sacrificing;
there are seven rites which an educated native of the place
classes with the sacrifices of other islands, (x) The simplest
is called Tan, laha, as when one retiu'ning from a voyage puts
food to the case containing the relics of his father, as did
Ara’ana. In the course of a voyage also, when landing on an
uninhabited islet, they will throw food and call on father,
grandfather, and other deceased friends, and in any dangerviii.]	Seven Sacrifices at Saa.	13.7
will do the same. Three other sacrifices have much in
common, and it depends on the person called in and consulted
to determine which shall be used, (a) One is called 'unu qo,
this is, burning a pig. This is offered in case of sickness, or
when the failure of a garden crop shews that some lio a has
been offended. A man known to be able to sacrifice is called
in, and is ready to say that he knows what lid a has caused
the mischief. To him is sent a small pig, which is to take
the place of the person whom the ghost lid a is plaguing ; and
he takes it to the sacred place of that lid a somewhere under
a tree, strangles it, and burns it whole in a fire kindled on
the sacred stones or on the ground. He burns with it also
grated yam and cocoa-nut mixed with fish ; and then he
stands and calls with a loud voice on the lid a of the place,
and with him he calls the names of all the ghosts of his family,
his ancestors, and all who are deceased, down even to children
and to women, and he names the giver of the pig for the food
of these lid a. A bit of the mixed food he leaves unburnt,
wraps it in a dracaena leaf, and puts it by the relic case of the
man to whose ghost he has been sacrificing. He is rewarded
for his services by a present of food. (3) Another is called
toto ’akalo, clearing the soul. It is performed in the house of
the sacrificer, who cooks a little pig or a dog, and cites the
names of the lid a who are causing the trouble, calling upon
them to toto, clear away the mischief, whether sickness, charm,
or curse, and to make the afflicted party clean. Then he takes
the pig out and throws it into the sea, or sets it on a stone in the
sacred place of the lid a he has addressed ; ‘ he will not put it
in a common place; it is holy, it has taken away the mischief,
it has made clean.’ (4) The third of these is called toto epa
hanua, clearing well the place, and is performed in the house
of the sick person for whose benefit it is offered. They cook a
pig or dog in the oven, cut it up, and lay all the parts in
order. Then the sacrificer comes and sits at the head, and
calls all the names of the dead members of the family of the
lio'a in order downwards, saying, ‘ Help, deliver this man, cut
short the line that has bound him.’ Then the pig is eaten by[CH.
138	Sacrifices.
all present, except the women ; nothing1 is burnt. The
remaining sacrifices are those of first-fruits. (5) When the
yams are ripe they fetch some from each garden to offer to
the Ho’a. All the family who consider a certain line of
ancestors to be the lid a with whom they are concerned in this
matter assemble, without the women, at the sacred place
belonging to them. One goes into the sacred place with
a yam, and cries with a loud voice to the lio a, ‘ This is
yours to eat,’ and puts the yam by" the skull which is in the
place. The others call quietly upon the names of all the
ancestors and give their yams, very many in number, because
one from each garden is given to each lid a. They add also
awalosi, the edible flower of a reed. This offering of first-fruits
is made in the early morning. If any one has in his house a
relic, head, bones, or hair, he takes back a yam to set beside it.
(6)	First-fruits of flying fish. These fish, like the bonito,
require a certain supernatural power to catch them; it is not
every canoe that goes after flying fish. When the season
comes the men get their floats ready, and the women go into
the gardens to dig new yams and make grated food. The men
then get a few flying fish, and sacrifice with them. Some
lid a are sharks, and to them the first-fruits are offered. Some
have sacred places ashore with figures of sharks set up, before
which cooked flying fish are laid ; some ghost-sharks have no
place on shore, and to them the fish are taken out to sea, their
names are called, and the fish shred to them for their food.
(7)	The new canarium almonds cannot be eaten till the first-
fruits have been offered to the lio a, and a similar offering is
made of the dried almonds before they are eaten, with added
flying-fish.
A sacrifice in San Cristoval has been already described. In
case of sickness, where a certain malignant ghost named Tapia
is believed to have seized on a man’s soul and bound it to a
banyan-tree, a sacrifice of substitution is offered. The man
who has access to Tapia is employed to intercede ; he takes a
pig or fish to the sacred place and offers it, saying, ‘ This is for
you to eat in place of that man; eat this, don’t kill him’; andvin.]	Santa Cruz Sacrifices.	139
he is then able to loose and take back the sick man’s soul so
that he may recover.
At Santa Cruz, when a man of consideration dies, his ghost
becomes a duka. A stock of wood is set up in his house
to represent him. This remains, and is from time to time
renewed, until after a time the man is forgotten, or the stock-
is neglected by the transference of attention to some newer
and more successful duka. When the stock is first put up, a
pig is killed, and the two strips of flesh from along the back-
bone inside are put before the stock as food for the duka
represented. These do not stay long, but are taken away and
eaten. When the stocks are renewed the same is done again;
and from time to time offerings of food are made to the duka
before the stock, laid there for a time, and then taken up and
eaten. In case of danger at sea, a duka is called by name, a man’s
father or a deceased chief, or a certain Lata who is not remem-
bered as a man, and a bit of food is thrown out; ‘ This is for
yon to eat.’ Betel-nuts are placed on sacred stones for the
duka. When a garden is planted they spread feather-money
and red native cloth round it for the duka, and take it away
again. A patient who has recovered from sickness under the
treatment of a native doctor gives a pig for the duka concerned
in the cure ; and when a pig is killed a bit of meat is placed
before the stock that represents him. Offerings of first-fruits
of yams are made in the same way, in the form of mash or
pudding. The economical offerings of Santa Cruz may be
explained by the belief that the duka, themselves immaterial,
have taken the immaterial substance of their gifts ; the gross
material therefore may be taken by fleshly men.
(2) The character of what may be called sacrifices in the
Banks’ Islands and Northern New Hebrides differs very much
from that of the sacrifices of the Solomon Islands in two
respects; the offerings are as a rule made to spirits and not to
ghosts, and there is no use of fire to consume what is offered.
It is true that fragments of food are thrown for the ghosts of
the lately deceased ; by an action no doubt closely connected
with the sacrifices of the western islands, but not with the140
[CH.
Sacrifices.
notion of a sacrifice as these more eastern people understand it.
In the use of the word in the Banks’ Islands which has been
taken as equivalent to ‘ sacrifice,’ viz. oloolo, it is important to
observe that the word is not employed in reference to the
spirit to whom the offering is made, but to the man himself
who presents the offering to the spiritx, which is the same
thing as to say that the word oloolo does not exactly mean to
sacrifice. Still there is a sacrificial offering, and it is a means
of propitiating a spirit after an offence, as well as a means of
obtaining what is desired. Food also is by no means commonly
the thing offered; in the Banks’ Islands perhaps nothing but
native money is the offering.
The spirits who are approached with these offerings are
almost always connected with stones on which the offerings
are made. Such stones have some of them been sacred to
some spirit from ancient times, and the knowledge of the
way to approach the spirit who is connected with them has
been handed down to the man who now possesses it. But
any man may find a stone for himself, the shape of which
strikes his fancy, or some other object, an octopus in his hole,
a shark, a snake, an eel, which seems to him something unusual,
and therefore connected with a spirit. He gets money and
scatters it about the stone, or on the place where he has seen
the object of his fancy; then he goes home to sleep. He
dreams that some one takes him to a place and shews him the
pigs or money he is to have because of his connexion with the
thing that he has found. This thing in the Banks’ Islands
becomes his tano-oloolo, the place of His offering, the object in
regard to which offering is made to obtain pigs or money.
II is neighbours begin to know that he has it, and that his
increasing wealth has its origin there; they come to him
therefore and obtain through him the good offices of the spirit
he has come to know. He hands down the knowledge of this
to his son or nephew. If a man is sick he gives another who
1 A man is said to oloolo with the money to the man who knows the stone ; the
latter is said to oloolo on the stone on behalf of the former, the former to oloolo
to the latter in regard to the stone; neither is said to oloolo to the vui spirit.vin.]	Banks Islands Sacrifices.	141
is known to have a stone of power,—the spirit connected with
which it is suggested that he has offended,—a short string
of money, and a bit of the pepper root, yea, that is used for
kava; the sick man is said to oloolo to the possessor of the
stone. The latter takes the things offered to his sacred place
and throws them down, saying, ‘ Let So-and-So recover.’
When the sick man recovers he pajrs a fee. If a man desires
to get the benefit of the stone, or whatever it is, known to
another, with a view to increase of money, pigs or food, or
success in fighting, the possessor of the stone will take him to
his sacred place, where probably there are many stones, each
good for its own purpose. The applicant will supply money,
perhaps a hundred strings a few inches long. The introducer
will shew him one stone and say, ‘This is a big yam,’ and the
worshipper puts money down. Of another he says it is a boar,
of another that it is a pig with tusks, and money is put down.
The notion is that the spirit, vui, attached to the stone likes
the money, wThich is allowed to remain upon or by the stone.
In case the oloolo, the sacrifice, succeeds, the man benefited
pays the man to whom the stones and spirits belong. If
a man goes to sacrifice for success in fighting, he takes great
care lest nothing sharp should prick or scratch him, or a stone
bruise him; in the one case he would be shot, in the other he
would be clubbed.
Some of these objects of sacrificial worship are well known,
but can only be approached by the person to whom the
right of access to them has been handed down ; there must
be between the worshipper who desires advantage and the
spirit who bestows it not only the medium of the stone,
or whatever other material object the spirit is connected
with, but also the man who through the stone has got a
personal acquaintance with the spirit. In Vanua Lava, at
Sarewoana near Alo Sepere, the legendary home of Qat, there
is still the stump of a tree which Qat cut down for his canoe, an
aged stump with young shoots springing from it; men who are
cutting a canoe make sacrifices at this stump, throwing down
money there that their canoe may be swift and strong and never142	Sacrifices.	[ch.
wrecked. It does not appear that any one comes between the
offerer and Qat in this, perhaps because Qat is known to every
one. There is no doubt often a sacrifice, oloolo, made in the
way of propitiation; but a vui is not a malignant spirit that
will do harm unless propitiated. If a man has heedlessly gone
into a sacred place and is afraid that he has offended the spirit
belonging to it, he will make his offering to the man whose
sacred place it is, that he may appease the spirit; and in the
case of sickness there is always the presumption that some
spirit has been offended. A man whose familiar spirit is
associated with a snake, an eel, owl, crab or some such
creature, visits it and makes his offerings to keep in favour
with it, or to obtain its favour for some one from whom he
receives money for an offering. They say that a man who has
a mae, an amphibious snake to which a certain awful character
belongs, as his familiar, goes to the sacred place it haunts and
calls it till it comes. He sits down and the snake crawls over
him, putting its tongue into his mouth, which he sucks.
He scatters money for the spirit, for he does not offer to the
snake but to the spirit, vui, that is with the snake and mani-
fested in it. He does not invoke or pray to the spirit, but he
may pray to the ghosts of his predecessors in this particular
mystery. When a man visits his familiar in this way no one
else is present, and the doubt has occurred to the native people
whether there be a snake at all. It is certain that when
a man has died who has been in the habit of receiving money
to offer to the snake, and another who has received instructions
from him as his successor has gone to reopen so profitable a
connexion, the creature has not been found ; but then it is
also concluded that the man and the snake die together.
Money in this same way of sacrifice, if so it can be called,
is scattered in a deep hole in a stream, or in a pool among
the rocks upon the beach ; wherever some impressive touch of
natural awe comes upon the native mind it apprehends the
presence of some haunting vui, and is moved to an act of
worship; but it is not to the stone or stream or tree, or to the
spirit of it, that the offering is made ; the vui is a person as aviii.]	New Hebrides Sacrifices.	143
man is, and its presence makes the place sacred. The number of
men who in old times had a sacred place with a familiar spirit
of their own was large, probably most of the grown-up men
had one; there was no priestly order, no sacred buildings,
nothing to make a public show.
In the Northern New Hebrides, spirits are approached very
commonly at stones, and offerings are made to them upon the
stones, to secure their favour or to reconcile them if offended.
This is all the sacrifice there appears to be at Maewo,
Aurora Island ; they use no word that can he translated
‘ sacrifice/ unless it he tivregi, which means to lay an offering
upon a stone. A certain offering, however, is made to a ghost;
if a man’s pig is lost he will go to the grave of a kinsman,
put on the stones above it, qaru, a tuft of dracaina or croton
leaves, and say, ‘ Get me back my pig.’ The ghost will drive
the pig back into the village. To offer thus is malai 0 qaru.
At Whitsuntide, Araga, there are stones connected with spirits
in sacred places ’which are known only to those who have
discovered them, or have been introduced into acquaintance
with the spirits by their predecessors. At these stones sacrifices
are made. A young man wishes to get on in the Loli Society,
to become rich, to live to be old, the main object being to be
a great man in the Loli. Such a person makes his offering of
a pig or mats to the man who is acquainted with the spirit,
ma clugu hoe laluinia-, for they say, as in the Banks’ Islands,
that the offering is not made to the spirit, but to the man who
knows him. This go-between keeps the pig for himself. He
goes to the sacred place taking the suppliant with him ; then
he mutters to Tagaro the spirit, ‘ This man has g-iven us two
a pig, let him be great, let him be a full-grown man.’ After
this the supplicant can go and make his requests in the sacred
place by himself. Sometimes a very young cocoa-nut is broken
and the juice poured over his head as a sign that he is ad-
mitted. They also put such a young cocoa-nut on the stone as
an offering. Such sacrifices are made for sunshine, rain, and
abundant crops. Offerings also are made to the ghosts of
powerful men recently deceased, either at their graves or144	Sacrifices.
where they are supposed to haunt. Men who know these
and have access to them, take mats, food, pig’s, living- or
cooked, into the sacred place and leave them there. At
Lepers’ Island they clrurju to the men who have access to
spirits, wui, in connexion with stones, giving money and pigs
to them for their intercession ; hut offerings are not com-
monly made directly to wui, or to ghosts either. Offerings
are made at sea near certain dangerous rocks ; a tuft of pig’s
hair or a fowl’s feather from the cargo, or a hit of food, is
thrown into the sea for Tagaro, that he may give a safe pas-
sage to the canoe. Bishop Patteson noted in the course of his
last voyage, that at Amhrym it was the practice for great
men to burn a pig entirely, without any accompanying prayer,
in their Suqe, with the view of obtaining mana. This must be
looked upon as a sacrificial act.
Note.—The sacrifices of the Solomon Islands may well he traced to the
desire of making the deceased still sharers of the common meal; what is offered
and burnt is common food. The further step of begging the offended ghost to
take all and spare the sick is taken at Saa and San Cristoval. It should be
remarked that there is nothing whatever to connect these sacrifices with the
buto (page 32), which, if anything, ma}T be taken for a totem. To connect the
offering of money, in the Banks’ Islands, to a spirit who is never the ghost of
a man, nor at all the animating spirit of a natural object, with the sharing of
the common meal with the deceased, is much more difficult. If there be a
Melanesian sacrifice to a god it is to a vui. To offer money is apparently to
give what man most values, and what the spirit also loves.CHAPTER IX.
PRAYERS.
A Melanesian native in danger, difficulty and distress, will
naturally call upon the beings in whose power to help him he
believes. He will upon occasion do this with exclamations
which express his feelings. This from his point of view
would not be prayer, because it has no formal character.
There are also songs, incantations, charms, which have
power in them by virtue of the names or words contained in
them. These are not addressed directly to the beings whose
power they bring to bear, and would not he called prayers.
There are besides invocations which may be called prayers,
that is formal addresses to beg for succour or for aid. But it
is certainly very difficult, if not impossible, to find in any
Melanesian language a word which directly translates the
word prayer, so closely does the notion of efficacy cling to
the form employed. Addresses which may be called prayers
in the Solomon Islands are of course made to the beings to
whom they look there for other than human aid, to the tindalo,
ghosts now powerful of men deceased. The invocations used
at sacrifices are prayers ; and those may properly be so called
which are used at sea. Thus at Florida to Daula, a tindalo
generally known and connected wit-h the frigate-bird : ‘ Do
thou draw the canoe, that it may reach the land ; speed my
canoe, grandfather, that I may quickly reach the shore whither
I am bound. Do thou, Daula, lighten the canoe, that it may
quickly gain the land, and rise upon the shore.’ They invoke
also Bagea as their grandfather ; the word bagea meaning
L[CH.
146	Prayers.
shark, and any tindalo that has taken np its abode in a shark,
or is represented by one, being called Bagea. They call also
upon their immediate forefathers when in dang’er on the
sea ; one on his grandfather, another on his father, another
on some dead friend; calling them with reverence, and
saving', ‘ Save us on the deep, save us from the tempest,
brino- us to the shore.’ Daula is invoked to aid in fishing :
‘If thou art powerful, mana, O Daula, put a fish or two
into this net and let them die there.’ After a good catch
he is praised: 1 Powerful, mana, is the tindalo of the net.’
They rub fishing-lines with the leaves appropriated to such a
tindalo. In San Cristoval the ’ataro ghosts are applied to for
help in battle, in sickness, and for good crops; but lihungai,
the word they use, conveys rather the notion of charm than of
prayer; the formula is handed down from father to son, or is
taught for a consideration. So at Saa a man who has no
special connexion with a Ho’a ghost will, in danger at sea,
call on his father or grandfather ; but one who knows some
particular Ho’a uses some particular form of words he has learnt
in which power over the elements resides, and when he has
done that, calls on the man now dead who introduced him to
the ho a and taught him the incantation, and after that again
upon his father and his grandfather.
The tataro of the Banks’ Islands, which may be called a
prayer, is strictly an invocation of the dead, and is no doubt
so called because the form begins with the word tataro, which
certainly is the ’ataro of San Cristoval, that is a ghost of
power. The Banks’ islanders are clear that tataro is properly
made only to the dead ; yet the spirits, vui, Qat and Marawa
are addressed in the same way. A man in danger on the sea
will call on deceased friends, particularly on one who has been
in life a good sailor ; but if he only cries out as he might in
common life that is no tataro, which must be a form of words.
The use of tataro in Motlav is thus described. A man is sick,
and the cause of his sickness is suggested to be an offence
against some sacred place near which he remembers himself
to have intruded. Then the man to whom the sacred pilaceIX.]
Banks' Island Prayers.
147
belongs will, for payment, go and tataro for him there
morning and evening. He calls aloud the name of the sick man.
and listens for an answering sound, the cry of a kingfisher or
of some other bird ; if he hears a sound he calls 1 Come back ’
to the life or soul of the sick man, runs back to the house
where he lies, and cries ‘ He will live,’ meaning that he brings
back the life. If it happens that on his way to the sacred
place a lizard runs up upon him, it is enough, he has the life
and goes back with it. If a man who has a stone is going to
it to offer, oloolo, upon it, and he sees a rat, crab, iguana, or
lizard on the way, he scatters a little loose money for it, and
says a tataro that he knows. When the oven is opened for a
meal, one of the men will break off a bit of food and throw it
against the side wall of the house with a tataro. In the same
way when water is poured into the oven to make the steam,
there is a tataro used against an enemy, or to get rain or
sunshine. Some Mota forms are as follows. On opening an
oven, when a leaf of cooked mallow is thrown for some dead
person : ‘ Tataro—this is a lucky bit for your eating ; they
who have charmed your food, have clubbed you (as the case may
be), take hold of their hands, drag them away to hell, let them
be dead.’ If after this the man at whom it was directed is
heard to have met with an accident, ‘ Oh ho!’ says the other,
‘ my curse in eating has worked upon him, he is dead.’ When
water is poured into the oven : ‘ Tataro—pour it on the head
of him down there who has laid plots against me, has clubbed
me, has shot me, has stolen this thing of mine (as the case
may be), he shall die1.’ On making a libation of kava before
drinking: ‘Tataro—Grandfather! this is your lucky drop of
kava ; let boars come in to me ; let rave come in to me; the
money I have spent let it come back to me, the food that is
gone let it come back hither to the house of you and me.’
1 ‘Prayer in Fiji generally concluded with malignant requests as to the
enemy. “ Let us live, and let those that speak evil of us perish. Let the
enemy be clubbed, swept away, uttery destroyed, piled in heaps. Let their
teeth be broken. May they fall headlong into a pit. Let us live, and let our
enemies perish.” ’—Rev. L. Fison.148
[CH.
Prayers.
On starting on a voyage: ‘ Tataro—Uncle! Father! plenty
of boars for you, plenty of raive, plenty of money; kava for
your drinking, lucky food for your eating in the canoe ; I
pray you with this, look down upon me, let me go on a safe
sea.’ Or when the canoe labours with a heavy freight:
1 Take off your burden from us, that we may speed on a safe
sea.’ Another was used over the oven in the ganial of the
Suqe club, the hole in which the fire is made : ‘ Grandfather!
may it he—Father! my Uncle ! my Greatuncle ! we two will
go on with a hundred fathom of money of yours ; look down
upon us two, do not look unfavourably upon us two ; let
money abound to us two, boars, rcnve, food ; let our suqe go on
to the end ; let not our outrigger be broken ; you sit and look
after us two ; let us two go on well, with no unfavourable
looks upon us ; let us two come straight on in the hole of us
three, in the hot suqe hole of us three, let the suqe come
forth and advance.’ There is no difference between these and
the invocations of the spirits, vui, Qat and Marawa, except
that these latter which follow, not being addressed to the
dead, are not properly tataro. These three were used at sea :
‘ Qate ! you and Marawa, cover over with your hand the blow-
hole from me, that I may come into a quiet landing-place ;
let it calm well down away from me. Let the canoe of you
and me go up in a quiet landing-place.’ ‘ Qate! Marawo !
look down upon me, prepare the sea of you and me, that I
may go on a safe sea. Beat down the head of the waves from
me, let the tide rip sink down away from me, beat it down
level that it may go down and roll away, and I may come
into a quiet landing-place.’ ‘ Qate! Marawo ! may it be—
let the canoe of you and me turn into a whale, a flying-fish,
an eagle ; let it leap on and on over the waves, let it go, let
it pass out to my land.’ In answer to such prayers as these
it was supposed that Qat and Marawa would come and hold
fast the mast and rigging of the canoe, jireserve it from
danger, and speed it on its course.
In the Northern New Hebrides, in Aurora, they use the
same word tataro for a form of words used for example ina storm at sea, a spell that works by the supernatural power
residing in the words and in the names of the spirits
mentioned. "When in distress and danger they call to a dead
father or friend, ‘ Take care of your canoe and mine,’ it is a
cry, not a tataro. The word is also used in "Whitsuntide and
Lepers’ Island, and with probably the same limited applica-
tion in strict native usage.CHAPTER X.
SPIRITS.
Beings of a more or less distinctly spiritual nature, who
at any rate never were men, have their place in the beliefs and
in the stories of the Banks’ Islands and the New Hebrides
very much more than in the Solomon Islands. Koevasi,
already mentioned, in Florida and Kahausibware in San Cris-
toval belong to the latter group, and may well be supposed
to be the same personage under different names. Both were
never human, yet in some way originators of the human
race; both were female, both subjects of stories, not objects of
worship. Kahausibware was a Ili’ona, a being of super-
human character, dwelling on the mountain of Bauro, the
central mass of San Cristoval, in the time of the infancy
of the human race. She was a snake in outward form,
'there was in the same place a woman, a human being, the
offspring in some way of Kahausibware. In those days all
the fruits of the earth grew without labour, and all was of the
best; it was Kahausibware who made men, pigs, and other
animals, cocoa-nuts, fruit-trees, and all the food with which the
island is now furnished, and death had not yet appeared. The
woman one day went to her work, and left her infant in the
house in charge of the spirit snake, who was so much annoyed
by the screaming of the child that she coiled herself round it
and strangled it. The mother came in while the folds of the
serpent’s body were still wound round her child, and seizing
an axe she began to chop the snake to pieces. As she
chopped it asunder the parts came together again ; but theSolomon Islands. Banks' Islands.
I5T
snake at last could bear it no longer, and cried out weeping,
‘ I go, and who will help you now ? ’ She made her way
down to the sea accordingly, and her track became a water-
course. Leaving the island, she swam across first to Lgi, but
from thence she could see the Bauro mountain; she went on
further to Uiawa, and thence again to the south-east end of
Malanta, but even there in clear weather she could see her
former home. She crossed therefore to Marau. the south-east
part of Guadalcanal- nearest to San Cristoval. where the view
of the mountain of Bauro is shut otf by the nearer hills; there
she rests till the present day. Since her departure all things
in San Cristoval have deteriorated. Snakes upon the Bauro
mountain are venerated as the progeny or representatives of
Kahausibware ; but they are simple snakes, and she was a
Hi'ona. or Figona.
In the Banks' Islands and in the Northern New Hebrides
the purely spiritual beings who are incorporeal are innumer-
able and unnamed. These are they whose representative form
is generally a stone, who haunt the places that are sacred
because of their presence, and who connect themselves with
certain snakes, owls, sharks, and other creatures. There is in
these things a medium of communication with them, and
they are powerful to assist those who can approach them, and
also to injure men, though they are not of a malignant nature.
They are certainly believed to have no body; yet it is
impossible for the natives to conceive of them as entirely
without form. Men, therefore, have declared that they have
seen something, indistinct, with no definite outline, grey like
dust, vanishing as soon as it was looked at, near a stone, and
this must have been a spirit, vui, inti. But the same word is
used to describe beings who are corporeal, and individually
known and named. The natives will deny that these have
bodies as men have, and assert that they are of the same
nature as those which are incorporeal; but yet in the stories
that are told about them they figure as men, though possessed
of powers which men can never have. Consistency can
hardly be expected; the native mind indeed aims high when152	spirits.	[on.
ill conceives a being which lives and thinks and knows and
has jlower in nature, without a, gross body or oven form; but
it lails when it conies to deal with an individual being ol' such
a nature, lienee the stories represent a vui like a man with
larger powers; a native seeing some new and wonderful
foreign work will cry ‘A vui made it!’, and receiving home
a boy ijTiiwn up in absence cries ‘y|/r rui i/ui! lie’s n> vui to
be sure I ’
It is remarkable again that of these superhuman beings
who are called mil or vui in the Hanks’ Islands and New
Hebrides, and whose actions are like those of men, there seem
lobe two kinds or orders, (tat in the Hanks’ Islands stories
and I agaro in the New Hebrides stories move like heroes or
demigods amidst a. lesser folk of dwarfs and trolls as lull of
mysterious magic power as they are, but comparatively rude
and easily deceived. These lingered in the islands when (tat
and his brothers and Tngnro and his brothers left them ; they
have been seen ol late in human form, smaller than the native
people, darker, and with long straight hair. Marawa, the
blend ol (tat, was one of these. A man living in Vanua
Ha.va but a few years ago, named Manlepei, going to the
river side in early morning, saw a little man with long
hanging hair, and followed him up the valley in which the
river runs, till they came to a. narrow gorge closed by a rock,
'fho vui rapped upon this with his hand and if opened to him ;
and hh Manl(‘))(‘i followed elono ItcIiiihI, if hIiiiIi u^'him upon
the mi both. They were in a. cave which was the viii’h house.
He said that he was Marawa, and that lie would appear again
to the man il he would go back to file village and bring him
money. Manlepei prospered ever alter through Mnrawa’s
aid, and he made no secret of the source id’ his prosperity; he
was always ready to receive money from Ins neighbours oil
Marawa, s behalf, and to procure for them a share in his good
will. If is not long either since a female vui with a child
was seen in Saddle Island, close to the house id' a man who
had often found a line yam laid for him on the seal, beside
his door, and had observed that hiH money-bag was still fullX.]
Banks' Islands. Nopitu!	153
after tie had paid a debt. There was a woman living1 a few
years ago in Mota whose father was a vui. Popular stories
shewed how these beings were believed to be at hand in the
affairs of men. A woman working in her garden heard a
voice from the fruit of a gourd asking her for food ; when she
pulled up a caladium or dug a yam another immediately came
into its place; but when she listened to another vui playing
on his panpipe, the first in his jealousy conveyed away the
garden and all. In these stories, and no doubt in common
belief, there was a certain confusion between these spirits and
ghosts of the departed.
Some vui, spiritual beings, yet in some way corporeal,
figure strangely in the stories of Mota as Nopitu, and of
Motlav, in another form of the same word, as Dembit. There
is often a difficulty in understanding what is told about them,
because the name Nopitu is given both to the spirit and to
the person possessed by the spirit, who performs wonders by
the power and in the name of the Nopitu who possesses him.
Such a one would call himself Nopitu; rather, speaking of
himself, will say not11,’ but 1 we two,’ meaning the Nopitu
in him and himself, or ‘ we ’ when he is possessed by many.
He would dance at a festival, such as a koletcole, as no man not
possessed by a Nopitu could dance. He would scratch him-
self, his arm or his head, and new money not yet strung would
fall from his fingers; Vetpepewu told me that he had seen
money fall from a Nopitu at a Jcoletcole—bags full. One would
shake himself on a mat and unstrung money would pour
down into it. He would take a cocoa-nut to drink, and the by-
standers would hear money pouring out instead of the liquor,
and rattling against his teeth, and he would spit it up upon
the ground. Tursal has seen at Mota a woman vomit native
money—a Nopitu possessed by such a spirit. To obtain the
favour of the Nopitu men would offer, oloolo, as at a sacrifice,
to the man possessed ; would give him a red yam and almonds ;
he would eat the yam raw, and be heard crunching money
with his teeth. If a young cocoa-nut was offered he would
open the eye and drink, and then give it back full of money.154
[CH.
Spirits.
But a Nopitu would also manifest itself in a different manner.
A party would be sitting round an evening fire, and one of
them would hear a voice as if proceeding from his thigh,
saying, ‘ Here am I, give me some food, I am hungry.’ He
would roast a little red yam, and when it was done fold it in
the corner of the mat on which he was sitting. In a little
while it would be gone, and then the Nopitu would begin to
talk and sing in a voice so small and clear and sweet, that
once heard it never could be forgotten ; but it sang the or-
dinary Mota songs, while the men drummed an accompaniment
for it. Then it would say, ‘ I am going; ’ they would call
it, and it was gone. Then a woman would feel it come
to her, and sit upon her knee; she would hear it cry
£ Mother! Mother! ’ She would know it, and carry it in
a mat upon her back like an infant. Sometimes a woman
would hear a Nopitu say ‘ Mother, I am coming to you,’ and
she would feel the spirit entering into her, and it would be
bom afterwards as an ordinary child. Such a one, named
Rongoloa, was not long ago still living at Motlav. The
Nopitu, like other spirits, were the familiars only of those
who knew them, and these were often women. If a man
wished to know and become known to a Nopitu, he gave
money to some woman who knew those spirits, and then one
would come to him.
The place of Qat in the popular beliefs of the Banks’ Islands
was so high and so conspicuous that when the people first
became know n to Europeans it was supposed that he w7as their
god, the supreme creator of men and pigs and food. It is
certain that he was believed to have made things in another
sense from that in w'hich men could be said to make them.
To the present day a mother chides a sleepy, fractious child, or
one crying with hunger, w'ith the words, ‘ Do you think you
are going to die ? Don’t von know7 that Qat made you so ? ’
If a pig comes indoors to sleep in bad weather, the man who
drives it out says to it, ‘ Qat made you to stay outside.’
These are not serious sayings ; but it was believed that Qat
had made some creatures and fixed the natural condition ofx.]	Banks Islands. Qat.	155
things in the world. The regular courses of the seasons are
ascribed to him, the calm months from September to December,
when the nn, Palolo sea-worm, comes, the yearly blow, and the
high tide in the month wotgoro; but irregular rains, winds
and calms are put to the account of the men who could influ-
ence other vui spirits so as to produce them. The name of Qat
is given also to remarkable objects and effects in nature ; when
fish die in the sea from excessive heat of the sun, Qat is said
to have poisoned them ; a kind of fungus is his basket, a fungia
coral is his dish, the sulphur at the volcanic vents in Vanna
Lava is his sauce, a beam of light shining through the roof in
the dusty air is his spear; and the flying shadow of a solitary
cloud over the sea is the shadow of Qat. With all this it is
impossible to take Qat very seriously or to allow him divine
rank. He is certainly not the lord of spirits. He is the hero
of story-tellers, the ideal character of a good-natured people
who profoundly believe in magic and greatly admire adroitness
and success in the use of it; Qat himself is good-natured,
only playfully mischievous, and thoroughly enjoys the exercise
of his wonderful powers1. When he is said to create he is
adding only to the furniture of the world in which he was
bom, where there were already houses and canoes, weapons,
ornaments, products of cultivated gardens and of such arts of
life as the natives possessed when they were first visited
by Europeans. It is difficult for the story-tellers to keep him
distinct from ordinary men, though they always insist that
he was a vui; and though he certainly never was a man, the
people of the place where he was born in Vanua Lava, Alo
Sepere, claim him as their ancestor.
It would be in vain to look for a connected history of Qat
from his birth to his disappearance ; he is the central figure of
a cycle of stories which vary in different parts of the islands
of the Banks’ group. All agree that he was born in Vanua
1 One can hardly help observing the absence of obscenity and ferocity from
these stories. Obscene tales, or parts of tales, no doubt are told where they
are acceptable, but they do not make any considerable part of the commonly
repeated legend.[CH.
156	Spirits.
Lava, and that finally he departed from the world. There
are no doubt many of his feats and adventures which the
natives have kept to themselves. The story which follows
is translated, with additions from other sources, from the
Mota of the late native Deacon Edward Wogale, himself
of the Sepere stock.
The Story of Qat. Qat was not without a beginning,
but he had a mother whose name was Qatgoro (otherwise
Iro Ul), and this mother was a stone that burst asunder and
brought him forth. He had no father, and he was born on
the road. He grew up and talked at once. He asked his
mother what his name was, saying that if he had a father or
an uncle on his mother’s side, one of them would name him ;
then he gave himself the name of Qat. He had brothers
also. The first was Tangaro Gilagilala, Tangaro the Wise,
who understood all things, and could instruct the rest;
the second was Tangaro Loloqong, Tangaro the Fool, who
was ignorant of everything, and behaved like a fool; the
others were Tangaro Siria, Tangaro Nolas, Tangaro Nokalato,
Tangaro Noav, Tangaro Nopatau, Tangaro Noau, Tangaro
Nomatig, Tangaro Novunue, Tangaro Novlog; eleven of
them, all Tangaro, twelve in all with Qat. The names of the
last nine are made up of the names of the leaves of trees and
plants, Nettle-leaf, Bread-fruit-leaf, Bamboo-leaf, Cocoa-nut-
leaf, Umbrella-palm-leaf, added to Tangaro, which is no
doubt the same with the Tagaro of the New Hebrides and
the Tangaroa of the Polynesians. These all grew up as soon
as they were born, and thejr took up their abode in the village
Alo Sepere, where their mother, turned into a stone, may yet
be seen. There Qat began to make things, men, pigs, trees,
rocks, as the fancy took him. But when he had made all
sorts of things he still knew not how to make night, and the
daytime was always light. Then said his brothers to him,
‘ Hallo! Qat, this is not at all pleasant, here is nothing but
day; can’t you do something for us? ’ Then, seeking what he
could do with the daylight, he heard that there was night at
Vava, in the Torres Islands; so he took a pig and tied it, andX.]
i57
Story of Qat.
put it into his canoe, and sailed over to Vava, where he
bought night, qong, from I Qong, Night, who lived there.
Others say that he paddled to the foot of the sky, to buy
night from Night, and that Night blackened his eyebrows,
and showed him sleep that evening, and taught him in the
morning how to make the dawn. Qat returned to his brothers
with the knowledge of night, and with a fowl and other
birds, to give notice of the time for the return of light. So
he bade them prepare themselves bed-places ; and they platted
cocoa-nut fronds and spread them in the house. Then for the
first time they saw the sun moving and sinking to the west,
and called out to Qat that it was crawling away. ‘It will
soon be gone/ said he ; ‘ and if you see a change on the face of
the earth, that is night.’ Then he let go the night. ‘ What
is this coming out of the sea,’ they cried, ‘ and covering the
sky?’ ‘That is night,’ said he ; ‘sit down on both sides of
the house, and when you feel something in your eyes, lie down
and be quiet.’ Presently it was dark, and their eyes began to
blink. 1 Qat! Qat! what is this ? shall we die ? ’	‘ Shut
your eyes,’ said he ; 1 this is it, go to sleep.’ When night had
lasted long enough the cock began to crow and the birds to
twitter ; Qat took a piece of red obsidian and cut the night
with it1; the light over which the night had spread itself
shone forth again, and Qat’s brothers awoke. After this he
occupied himself again in making things.
According to the story told at Lakona, in Santa Maria, Qat
and Marawa (another via who here corresponds to the Supwe
of Maewo and Araga) dwelt in their place at Matan, near to
the mountain Garat, where the volcanic fires still smoulder.
They two made men in this way. Qat cut wood of dracaena-
trees into shape; he formed legs, arms, trunks, heads, and
added ears and eyes; then he fitted part to part, and six days
he worked about it. After this he fixed the time of six days
for them to come to life. Three days he hid them away, and
1 Hence the expressions, o mar an me teve, the morning has cut, and o mera
ti lamasag, the dawn strikes upon the sky, mera being a common word
for red.[CH.
158	Spirits.
three days he worked to give them life. He brought them
forth and set them up before his face; then he danced to
them and saw that they moved a little; he beat the drum for
them, and saw that they moved more than before. Thus he
beguiled them into life, so that they could stand of themselves.
Then he divided them, setting each male by himself and giving
him a female, and he called the two husband and wife. Three
women he made, and three men. But Marawa made his of
another tree, the tavisoviso ; he worked at them six days also,
and set them up, and beat the drum for them, and gave them
life as Qat had done for his. But when he saw them move
he dug a pit, covered the bottom of it with cocoa-nut fronds,
and buried his men and women in it for six days. Then when
he scraped off the earth with his hands to view them, he found
them all rotten and stinking'; and this was the origin of death
among men.
According to the story as told in Mota, Qat made men and
pigs at first in the same form, but on his brothers remonstrating
with him on the sameness of his creatures, he beat down the
pigs to go on all fours and made men walk upright. Man
was made of clay, the red clay from the marshy riverside at
Yanua Lava. The first woman was Iro Vilgale. Qat took rods
and rings of supple twigs and fashioned her as they make
the tall hats for the qatu, binding on the rings to the rods, and
covering all over with the spathes of sago-palms : hence her
name from vil to bind, and gale to deceive. When all was
finished he saw a smile, and then he knew that she was a
living woman.
Qat had, however, a wife, a female vui, Iro Lei by name, but
he had no children. His brothers, who had no wives of their
own, envied him the possession of the beautiful Ro Lei, as well
as of his excellent canoe, and were always conspiring to get
both into their own hands. When his work of creation was
completed, Qat proposed to his brothers that they should cut
canoes for themselves, and they began to work, each choosing
a different kind of tree. Qat cut down a large tree well
suited for a canoe, and worked secretly every day, but made noX.]
159
Story of Qat.
progress in his work; every day when he returned to work he
found the wood that he had chopped away replaced, and the
tree made solid again. At length one evening when he had
finished his day’s work he lay down to watch, making himself
small, and covering himself with a large chip which he drew
away from the rest and hid. Presently he saw a little old
man with long white hair creep out of the ground and begin
to replace the chips, each in the place from which it had
been cut, till the tree trunk was almost whole again. But
there was one defective place to which the chip belonged
which Qat had hidden, and the old man began to search for it,
and Qat watched. After a while he saw it and advanced to
take it; but Qat leapt up from under it, lifting up his shell
axe to cut him down. But Marawa, the spider, another very
powerful mi, for this was he, entreated Qat, ‘ Ah, friend, don’t
kill me, and I will make your canoe all right again ; ’ and he
worked at it, and soon finished it with his nails1. When
all the canoes were finished, Qat bade his brothers launch
their own, and as each was launched he lifted his hand, and
one by one they sank. Then Q.at and Marawa appeared in
the one that they had made, paddling swiftly about, to the
astonishment of the brothers, who had not known that Qat had
even begun to work. Having amused himself with their
mortification, he recovered their canoes for them in the night.
After this his brothers tried with many deceits to destroy Qat,
so that they might possess themselves of his wife and his
canoe. One day they took him to the hole of a land crab
under a stone, which they had already so prepared by digging
under it that it was ready to topple over upon him. Qat
crawled into the hole and began to dig for the crab; his
brothers tipped over the stone upon him, and, thinking him
crushed to death, ran off to seize Ro Lei and the canoe. But
Qat called on Marawa by name,1 Marawa ! take me round about
to Ro Lei,’ and by the time that his brothers reached the
1 Hence, when iron was seen in the form of nails, it was called at Mota
Marawa’s finger-nails, pis Marawa, and pismarawa is now a widely accepted
name for nails.i6o
[CH.
Spirits.
village, there was Qat to their astonishment sitting by the side
of his wife. On another occasion they cut half through the
bough of a fruit-tree, and persuaded Qat to go out for the nuts.
When he fell as the branch broke, and as they thoug-ht was
killed, Marawa again saved him ; and when they ran to seize
his wife, they found him lying witli his head upon her lap.
Qat was himself always ready to play tricks on his brothers,
but not in malice. One moonlight nig-ht he induced them to
go and shoot flying foxes, and as they were going covered
himself with boards, and flew up into a pandanus-tree and hung
there like a bat. His brothers saw him, shot at him, and hit
him. He spat out blood upon the ground, and they, making
sure that he was wounded, mounted one after another into the
tree to take the bat. As each one shot and climbed after him
he flew off, and returned to hang again. When all had shot
and climbed up he flew home, took out the arrows which had
stuck into his covering of boards, and hung them up in the
gamal. When his brothers returned he asked them what sport,
they had; and when they told how they had shot and hit a
wonderful bat, he made them look at the arrows and judge
whose they were. Iro Lei took her part in these tricks. One
day when Qat and his brothers were sailing in their canoes
they saw a woman on a point of rock, who called each of them
as he came near to come and have some of her food. Each as
he drew near and saw that she was an old woman rejected her
offer; but Qat came up and took her into his canoe. They
had rejected his much-coveted wife, for this was Ro Lei
in disguise.
Again they consulted how they might destroy him, and
determined to entrap him while snaring birds. They prepared
each one for himself his place in a nutmeg-tree, each in suc-
cession further and further from the village, and the tree for
Qat much further away than all. Then they took Qat out
and shewed him his place. Qat mounted into his tree, and as
soon as he was busy with his snares his brother nearest to
him descended from his own place, ran beneath the tree
where Qat was sitting, and said, ‘ My nutmeg, swell! ’ TheX.]
Adventzires of Oat.	161
nutmeg-tree instantly grew so large in the trunk that Qat’s
arms could never clasp it, and all its boughs and branches
equally swelled out. But Qat did not at first discover this,
because he was busy setting his snares ; his brother who had
laid the spell upon the nutmeg-tree ran back, collecting the
others as he went into the village ; they seized and carried
off Ro Lei, dragg’ed down the canoe into the sea, and paddled
off at once. The island had already sunk out of their sight
when they blew their shell trumpet to let Qat know that they
were gone. When he heard it he knew what had happened,
and would have followed them, but the size of the swelled
branches of the nutmeg-tree made it impossible for him to
descend; he tried and tried in vain, and then lifted up his
voice and wept. His friend Marawa, the Spider, heard his
cries, and came to ask him what was the matter. ‘ I can’t get
down,’ said he ; 1 my brothers have played me this trick.’
‘ Down with you,’ said Marawa, whose hair was exceedingly
long and loose ; and he sent up his hair to Qat, who de-
scended by it and ran into the village. There he found the
rollers of his canoe alone remaining, and sought his wife in
vain, for his brothers had taken off his wife and his canoe to
be their own. Then Qat went inside his house, and took his
cock’s-tail plume, and his string of the smallest shell-money,
his red earth, and his shell hatchet, and asked his mother for
his banana fruit. 1 They have plucked them all,’ she answered,
‘ except these little ones at the end of the bunch.’ 1 Pluck
them all off,’ said Qat. Then he took a cocoa-nut-shell bottle
and stowed all his things and his food within it, made him-
self small and took his seat within it, and bade his mother
count three waves, and at the fourth small wave to throw it
into the sea. So Qat floated on and on in the bottle till he
came up to the canoe in which his brothers were, for they had
not yet reached land. Then he floated along before the bow
of the canoe, and where he drifted thejr were forced to follow.
By-and-by he took one of his bananas and ate it, and threw
the skin into the sea where the canoe would come along.
Ilis brothers saw it, and remarked that it was like thote
Mbananas of Qat’s that they had taken ; they enquired among
themselves who had been eating a banana, and when all denied,
Tangaro the Wise spoke out: ‘You fellows,’ said he, ‘it is
Qat who has eaten this banana, and has thrown the skin of
it here for us, to give us notice that he is not dead, but that he
has escaped and is following us.’ lint the rest of them would
not listen to him, declaring that Qat was dead. The same
happened again when he threw out for them another banana
skin. After this they saw the bottle itself in which Qat was
floating, close up to the canoe, and ono of them took it up,
thinking that it was a good cocoa-nut, but when ho smelt it
and found the smell bad, he threw it away again. This they
did one after another, except Tangaro the Wise, who did not
happen to observe it. Then Qat floated quickly to the shore
of Maewo, and emerged from his bottle; he colours his hair
with the red earth, binds his small shell-money round his
head, sticks his cock’s-tail plume in his hair, takes his seat on
the top of a male pandanus-tree on the beach, and there ho
sits and waits for his brothers to come to land who were still
in the canoo. Presently they came through the reef and up
to the shore, and then they looked up and saw him sitting
in the panda,nus, and enquired one of another who it was
sitting up there. ‘ It is Qat,’ said Tangaro the Wise ; but
his brothers argued that he coidd not havo made his way
thither, seeing that he was already dead. ‘ That is Qat, and
no mistake,’ said Tangaro the Wise ; for lie knew better than
his brothers about this and all other things. So they brought
their canoe to land, but had no need to haul it up, for Qat
made the rocks to rise and bear it high and dry. Qat leaped
down upon them with his axe, and hewed the canoe to pieces
for them with this song,—‘Chop, chop the canoe; whose
canoe is it? Marawa’s canoe. My brothers tricked mo about
twisting a string—swell nutmeg-tree-—-and draw the snare.
I had one canoe, my canoe slipped oil' from me.’ So he
chopped the canoe lo pieces before their face. After this ho
made friends with them, and bade them live in harmony
together.X.]
Adventures of Oat.
163
Another remarkable series of adventures wore Qat’s en-
counters with Qasavnra. rl’liis wan a mi. very strong, a great,
lighter, tyrant and cannibal, who dwelt in i,ho island which
was the homo of (hit and his brothers. One day the brothers
went to bathe, and found llonting down the stream a fruit of
the Tahitian chestnut, a, matte. The others took it up one
after another and rejected it., thinking if was not 'good, but
(ball took it and found it good, and gave it to bis mother to
eoolc. I'laeh of the brothers as he returned from bathing went
to their mother for food. She had nothing but Qat’s make.
and they each took a hit of it; Tangaro the Fool finished it.
Qaf sent them to get, some more, and following up the stream
down w hich this fruit had floated they came upon the tree.
They climbed upon if to gather the chestnut,s, and Tangaro
the Fool dropped one upon the house of Qasavnra, over w hich
the branches hung. Out, came the ogre in a, rage, seized and
killed the brothers, and put, (hem in his Ibod-ehcst. Qal
waited live days, then took his bow and arrows and shell
hatchet, and went in search. Following- the stream he found
the tret', and divining what had happened, brought out
Qasavara bv dropping a, make on bis house. They fought, and
(hit killed Qasavam ; then, searching for his brothers, ho found
their bones in the Ibod-ehest. lie revived them by blowing
through a reed into t heir mouths, and bidding them, if they
were his brothers, laugh. Another adventure not very con-
sistent, with this is thus narrated. Qasavara falling in with
Qal and his brothers invited them to his village, and made a
lire in his oven for them. When if was evening he told them
t hat, they wore to sleep b\r themselves in his gamut \ but they,
knowing that they would be killed, were exceedingly afraid,
blight, fell and they wore very sleepy, and (hit, called them to
come to bed. lie rapped asunder with his knuckles one of
the rafters of the i/amat, and they all got inside and slept.
In the middle of the night, Qasavara and his men took clubs
and bows and came to kill (hit's party, but, not, linding them
in the sleeping places went back disappointed. At the
approach of day the cock crew , and (hit, awoke his brothers.164	Spirits.	[ch.
bidding them crawl out at once, lest they should be seen
leaving the rafter by daylight. So they came out; and
when it was clear day Qasavara and his men running to the
gamal found Qat and his brothers chatting together. ‘ Where
did you sleep) ? ’ asked they. All of them answered that they
had slept in the place appointed for them; but Tangaro the
Fool cried out, ‘ We slept in this rafter here,’ to the great
indignation of his brothers. Qasavara’s party again as the
night drew on took counsel how they might kill them in the
rafter; but that night Qat rapped a side post with his
knuckles, it opened and they slept within it. Qasavara’s
party came in the night and smashed the rafter, found no
one there, and again retired. Nest morning again they
came into the gamal and found Qat and his brothers sitting
unconcerned; and again Tangaro the Fool confessed they
had been sleeping in the side post. Next night again Qat
opened the great main post and they slept in it, and again
Qasavara came and smashed the side post, and found no one
there. Tangaro the Fool again made known their retreat,
though he had been warned and scolded by his brothers.
Qasavara now determined to try another course, and to kill
them as they were sitting at a feast; that night Qat opened
the ridge pole with a rap and they all slept in it. Knowing
what was intended, Qat made his preparations to save his
brothers by planting a casuarina-tree; and he gave them his
instructions what they were to do. ‘ When they are getting
the food ready,’ he said,1 wash your hands with the salt-water
in the bamboo water-vessels till they are empty; and then
when they are looking for salt-water, and wanting some one
to go and fill the vessels, two of you are to offer to go; and
two are to go at once ; and when you get some way off smash
the bamboo vessels on the ground, and climb up into the
casuarina-tree. All of you are to do this.’ They all agreed,
and did as they were bid. Then, when the oven was all
covered in, Qasavara’s men cried out ‘ Hallo ! there is no salt-
water! who will fetch some?’ ‘We two,’ said two of Qat’s
brothers; and they went, and smashed the water-vessels andX.]
Qat and Qasavara.	165
climbed into the casuarina-tree. Qasavara’s men waited for
them till they were tired, and then asked some others to go;
two more of Qat’s brothers went, and smashed the vessels
alid climbed into the tree. So it went on till all his brothers
were in the tree, and Qat alone was left beside the oven with
Qasavara and his men. Then as they opened the oven Qat
sat with a large handful of food-bags beside the oven, and as
they were taking out the food Qasavara struck at Qat with
his club and missed him. Qat leapt away from him to the
other side of the oven, and taking up food from within it
cried, 1 This for my brother, this for my mate,’ and stowed
it in the bags. Qasavara leapt across after him, struck
at him and missed him again; and Qat again jumped
across, took up food with the same cry, and stowed it in
his bags. So it went on till all the food in the oven was
taken, and all the bags were full. Then Qat rose and ran
to his brothers, and Qasavara after him, hitting- at him with
his club and missing him as he ran, chasing him till he
reached his brothers. Then Qat jumped away from him into
the tree, and Qasavara climbed after him. Qat’s brothers
were gathered together on the tree top, and Qat climbed to
them, and there they sat still, for they could climb no-
higher. Then Qasavara climbed close to them, and stretched
out his club a't arm’s length to strike them ; but Qat cried
out 1 My casuarina, lengthen ! ’ So the casuarina elongated
itself between Qat’s party and Qasavara, and left him far
below. But Qasavara climbed after them again, and again
came close to them ; and again Qat cried, ‘ Lengthen, my
casuarina ! ’ and again the tree lengthening itself carried Qat
and his brothers away from Qasavara. So it went on till the
tree top reached the sky. Then said Qat, ‘ Bend down, my
casuarina ! ’ and the tree bent its top down to Tatgan, and they
all one after another got down to the ground there, and Qat
the last of them. And as he reached the ground he held fast
on to the top of the casuarina and waited before letting it go ;
and Qasavara followed down after them and reached the end.
Then cried Qat, 1 Now I revenge myself.’ ‘ Ah, Qat! ’ criedi66
Spirits.
[CH.
Qasavara, ‘ do me no harm; take me kindly for one of your
household, and I will work for yon.’ £ No, indeed,’ said Qat,
‘ hut I will revenge myself for the mischief you have done me.’
So he let go the tip of the casuarina-tree, and the tree sprang
hack and flipped off Qasavara, and his head knocked against
the sky, and he fell hack upon the earth ; and there he lay at
length upon his face, and turned into a stone. And now they
offer sacrifices at that stone for valour; if any one desires to
he valiant and strong in fighting, he offers at that stone,
which they say is Qasavara h
The stone apparently is not at Tatgan in Vanua Lava, where
it should he ; so they say it is in Gaua; hut it is agreed that
Qat and his brothers took up their abode at Tatgan. It was,
however, from Gaua that the story makes Qat to have taken
his departure from the world. Where now in the centre of
that island is the great lake, the Tas, there was formerly a
great plain covered with forest. Qat cut himself a large canoe
there out of one of the largest trees. While making it he was
often ridiculed by his brothers, and asked how he would ever
get so large a canoe to the sea. He answered always that they
would see by-and-by. When the canoe was linished he took
inside it his wife and brothers, collected the living creatures
of the island, even those so small as ants, and shut himself
with them inside the canoe, to which he bad made a covering.
Then came a deluge of rain ; the great hollow of the island
became full of water, which burst through the surrounding hills
where now descends the great waterfall of Gaua. The canoe
tore a channel for itself out into the sea and disappeared.
The people believed that the best of everything was taken from
the islands when Qat so left them, and they looked forward to
his return. When for the first time Bishop Patteson and his
companions went ashore at Mota, some of the natives now
living remember that it was said that Qat and his brothers
were returned. Some years after that a small trading vessel ran
1 As Qasavara fell from heaven the women in their fright held their hands
above their heads, but the men held theirs before their breasts; consequently
from that time forth men grow bald and the breasts of women protrude.X.]
Santa Cruz. Duka.
167
on the reef at Gaua, and was lost. The old people, seeing her
apparently standing in to the channel of the waterfall stream,
cried out that Qat was come again, and that his canoe knew
her own way home. It is likely now that the story will he
told of eight persons in the canoe ; but it is certain that the
story is older than any knowledge of Noah’s ark among the
people.
It is very probable that Lata, who is said by the people of
Santa Cruz to have made men and animals, is regarded by
them as Qat was regarded by the people of the Banks’
Islands ; and Tinota is a clulca of the same kind with Lata.
A story which is told of Natei, now the chief man at Nelua in
Santa Cruz, shews a belief also in such beings as the Banks’
islanders believed to dwell with them in their islands, and
called vui. The story is doubtless much older than Natei, as
the similar story of Manlepei in Vanua Lava was doubtless
told of some other man, and by some other man of himself,
long before his time. The present younger generation at
Santa Cruz seeing Natei a great man, and taking it of course
that his greatness came by supernatural assistance, tell this
story of him. When he was a young man, they say, he was
following the upward course of a narrow valley looking for
birds to make feather-money, and advanced far inland into the
forest. A person met him and asked him who he was, and he
answered that he was a man. To Natei’s like enquiry the
same answer was made. This person then took him by a very
good path up the valley, which narrowed into a ravine. This
opened again into a space in which were good gardens and a
village. The people there enquired of Natei where he lived,
and promised him that they would visit him at Nelua in five
days ; then he returned. Five days after the people of Nelua
saw some people coming to their village, whom they took to
be men from some inland place, and enquiring for Natei. Ilis
house was shewn to them and they entered it, and were never
seen again. When he arrived and went into his house he
found it hung round with feather-money brought to him by
his visitors. It was known then that these were not mere168	Spirits.	[ch.
men, and it was remembered that they had long, straight hair.
After this people would give Natei money and other things
to obtain the favour of his friends, with whom he still kept up
communication, and from that time he has thriven and risen
in the world.
The nearest of the Banks’ Islands to the New Hebrides is
Merlav, Star Island, and there Qat and his brothers are the
subjects of the stories common in the rest of the group. The
northernmost of the New Hebrides and nearest to Merlav is
Maewo, Aurora, and there Qat, though not unknown, is not
recognised as a spirit, but Tagaro takes his place. Qatu they
said was a great man of old times, very high in the suqe, as
men used to be and are no longer now. But Tagaro was a
wui. Of any wui the belief in Maewo was that he had no
bodily form ; any old man there would so describe one. Yet
the stories of Tagaro, who was a wui, deal with him as the
stories of the Banks’ Islands deal with Qat. Of the brothers
of Tagaro nothing is to be told, but his companion was Suqe-
matua, who in all things was contrary to him. Tagaro wanted
everything to be good, and would have no pain or suffering;
Suqe-matua would have all things bad. When Tagaro made
things, he or Suqe-matua tossed them up into the air; what
Tagaro caught is good for food, what he missed is worthless.
Tagaro lived at Mambarambara, and particularly at Hornbio,
not far from Tanoriki. He was not born there, but there he
lived, made his canoe, built his house and his gamal, and
created and raised his food. His life was full of wonders ; his
cocoa-nuts increased as he ate them ; dry nuts out of which
he scooped the meat filled up again. Finally Tagaro became
angry because some one stole his pig, and went off to Mamalu,
no one knows where ; he turned the island upside down, and
went off eastwards in his canoe from the east coast of the
island, taking with him the best of everything, and never to
return. He put out the lire, but threw back a fire-stick ; his
shell trumpet lies on the beach in the form of a rock ; Lepers’
Island is his canoe. His place at Ilombio is very sacred; his
yams still remain there, and trail over a gamal called the gamalX.j
i\ew neonaes. Tagaro.	169
dam, the yam gamal. There is also one wni, Gaviga, and some
say another, who rules over the dead; but the multitude of the
purely spiritual, incorporeal beings that are called wni belong
to the sacred stones. In Araga, Whitsuntide Island, imme-
diately south of Maewo, Tagaro has ten brothers, besides Suqe,
who accompanies and thwarts him. Tagaro came down from
heaven, made men and other things, and went back again to
heaven. Suqe belonged to the earth ; his head was forked,
therefore he had two thoughts in it. Whatever Tagaro did or
made was right, Suqe was always wrong; he would have men
die only for live days; he wanted to have six nights to one day;
he planted the scooped meat of the yam, not the rind. Tagaro
sent him to a place where is a bottomless chasm, somewhere
inland in Araga, where he rules over the ghosts of the dead.
Tagaro when on earth, though a wui, had a human form, with
superhuman power. He made the plain country by treading
the ground with his feet; where he did not tread are the hills.
He had no wife or children of his own kind, but he became
the father of a boy on earth. The boy kept asking his mother
who his father was, and was told that he was in heaven. Then
he must needs go to heaven to see his father, and his mother
made him a bow and an arrow of an ere, a flowering reed. He
shot up and hit the skjr; his ere turned into something like the
aerial root of a banyan, up which the two climbed to heaven.
There they found Tagaro sitting in a Wife-tree, and fashioning
images of himself out of the fruit. One of these he threw to
the boy, who took it to his mother. She recognised the
features, and told the boy it was his father. Tagaro consented
to go back with them ; but as he descended he cut the line
above them and below himself, and went back to heaven,
while they came down to Atambulu, the original seat of men
in that island.
There are also many wni, all connected with stones and
sacred places, whose names are only known to those who have
access to them. These also may be seen, in rain or towards
nightfall, and they give men food. When they appear they
have long hair, sometimes long nails, and wear an old malo170	Spirits.	[ch.
waist-cloth. But these appear to he confused with the wild
mountain creatures in human form, of whom tales are told in
all the islands; for one that Tapera saw not long ago was a
Sarivanua of the hills, standing in the rain by a banyan-tree,
with bananas in his hand. He was like a man with small
legs ; when spoken to he did not answer, and when struck
he did not feel. The multitude of 2vui, whose stones and
haunts are sacred, are unknown by name, and have no form
of body.
In Omba, Lepers’ Island, a spirit, vui, is thus defined : spirits
are immortal; have bodies, but invisible ; are like men, but do
not eat and drink, and can be seen only by the dead. But
there are’ others also that appear in bodily shape. Some are
known by name, of whom the most remarkable are Nggelevu,
who presides over the dead, and Tagaro and his brothers or
companions. Suqe is not known in all parts of the island ;
his place is perhaps supplied by Tagaro-lawua, who answers also
to Tangaro-loloqong in the Banks’ Island stories. It was
Tagaro who made fruit-trees, food, pigs, and lastly men, and
he is still invisibly active in human affairs, and therefore
invoked in sickness and all difficulties. Tagaro-lawua, the
Big, was a boaster and incapable; Tagaro-mbiti, the Little;
was exceedingly knowing and powerful; if Tagaro is spoken
of it is Tagaro-mbiti who is meant. As Qat is represented by
Tagaro-mbiti, so Merambuto, also a vui, answers to Qasavara.
He, like the other, tried to catch Tagaro’s party by night and
kill them, but Tagaro made them all sleep in a shell, is'ext
morning Tagaro-lawua let out the secret, and Tagaro-mbiti
made them sleep elsewhere. All the stones that are sacred are
connected with Tagaro, though other spirits also are concerned ;
all charms have their power from the name of Tagaro in them.
There are besides, as in the neighbouring islands, spiritual
beings, vui, not of the same order as Tagaro. They are super-
human in nature and in power, and the}7 can be seen. There
is a man still living who one day followed his two wives down
to the beach, and noticed there that some cocoa-nuts had been
stolen from a heap he had made. Following footsteps heX.]
Lepers Island. Tagaro-mbiti.	171
found two female vui, who said they were hungry. He
promised them food and brought it to them—four baskets-full.
One of the women was beautiful, the other full of sores.
They asked him which he would have, and he answered that
he would take them both. Thereupon each gave him a stone
full of mana, one to get him ten barrow-pigs, the other for ten
sows ; and they promised always to help him to get pigs, that
he might mount to greatness in the Suqe. These women
were vui, whose power lay in pigs; nevertheless, to this day,
when the man’s wives go down to the beach for their fishing,
they find fish caught and lying- ready for them. It is well
worthy of notice that Merambuto and his fellows are represented
not only as to a certain extent mischievous and unfriendly, but
also easily deceived and ignorant. This appears clearly in the
story of Merambuto and Tagaro-mbiti in the tree, where
Merambuto did not know and dreaded as something unknown
the conch-shell trumpet, as a Motlav story also represents a
vui as afraid of the sound of a drum. On the side of Lepers’
Island which is nearest to Araga the story of Suqe is told, and
he is represented as always in the wrong, though he shares
the work of creation with Tagaro. They two made the land,
and the things upon it; when they made the trees the fruit
of Tagaro’s was good for food, but Suqe’s bitter; when they
made men, Tagaro said they should walk upright on two legs,
Suqe that they should go like pigs ; Suqe wanted to have men
sleep in the trunks of sago-palms, Tagaro said that they
should work and dwell in houses; so they always disagreed,
and the word of Tagaro stood. It was Tagaro also who went
to Maewo and brought back night in a shell. When he let
it out and darkness crept over the sky, men wept and beat
their houses. Tagaro is represented also as the father of ten
sons, of whom Tagaro-mbiti, the Little, was the last, and
exceedingly small. His brothers went out to work, but he
stayed at home with a sore on his leg. They planted the
leaves of the edible caladium, the top shoot of the banana, the
vine of the yam ; but when they were gone he took the crown
of the caladium, the suckers of the banana, the rind of the yam,17 2	Spirits.
and planted them. His brothers scolded him for idleness, not
knowing what he had done ; hut when the season came round
and they had nothing to eat, he shewed them his garden full
of abundant food. It was Tagaro also (but Qatu in the
Maewo story) who married the winged woman—a Banewono-
wono or Vinmara, Web-wing or Dove-skin—from heaven. This
was not exactly a spirit, vui, hut one of a party of women with
webbed wings like those of bats. These women flew down
from heaven to bathe, and Tagaro watched them, lie saw
them take off their wings, stole one pair, and hid them at the
foot of the main pillar of his house. He then returned and
found all fled but the wingless one, and he took her to his
house and presented her to his mother as his wife. After
a time Tagaro took her to weed his garden, when the yams
were not yet ripe, and as she weeded and touched the yam
vines, ripe tubers came into her hand. Tagaro’s brothers
thought she was digging the yams before their time and
scolded her; she went into the house and sat weeping at the
foot of the pillar, and as she wept her tears fell, and wearing
away the earth pattered down upon her wings. She heard
the sound, took up her wings, and flew back to heaven.
Beings called Tavogivogi must be classed as spirits : they
are certainly not human beings, and correspond to the
mysterious snakes called vine, which in neighbouring islands
are believed to assume the form of men. A Tavogivogi is
not thought ever to have the appearance of a snake ; one of
them appears in the form of a youth or woman, in order to
entice one of the opposite sex, and the young man or woman
who yields to the seduction dies. There is no outward sign
of the real character of the Tavogivogi, but the test is to
ask the name of a tree, and a wrong answer will shew that
there is deceit. Successful or not the Tavogivogi suddenly
disappears, ‘ like a bird,’ but in the form of a bird or other
creature. The young man goes home and sickens; he re-
members the sudden disappearance, knows what has befallen
him, and never recovers. The name means ‘ changeling,’ from
the word, in the Banks’ Islands wog, to change the form.CHAPTER XL
SACRED PLACES AND THINGS.
It is almost certain that idols find no place in the account
which I now proceed to give of sacred places and objects as
I am acquainted with them in Melanesia. It is true that the
word is commonly enough used to describe any kind of image
of native workmanship, whether there be really something of
a sacred character attached to it, or none whatever. The
people of San Cristoval, Ugi, and Ulawa were conspicuous
for their fondness for carving and the skill with which they
worked ; a man among thejp would amuse himself by shaping
a soft stone or bit of wood into a figure of a man or bird, or
fish, as well as in carving by way of decoration what he made
for use. I have seen at Fagani (Ila’ani) in San Cristoval
a remarkably clever group over the apex of a gable, which
represented a man climbing up to shoot an opossum, and the
animal looking down upon him from the top of the pole in
the most natural attitude. This would hardly be taken for
an idol, but is as much an idol as many figures which have
found their way into museums as such. The canoe-houses,
common halls, public-houses, called in those parts oha, were
full of carvings in the constructive as well as decorative parts.
Some of these, the posts for example which support the ridge-
pole and purlins, are often figures of men, who would be
loosely called ancestors by the principal people of the village,
and these would be treated with respect; sometimes food and
betel-nuts would be seen laid before them. But these had no
sacred character, further than that they were memorials of174
[CH.
Sacred Places and Things.
deceased great men, whose ghosts visiting their accustomed
abodes would be pleased at marks of memory and affection,
and irritated by disrespect. There was no notion of the
ghost of the dead taking up his abode in the image, nor was
the image supposed to have any supernatural efficacy in itself.
In any oka in Malanta may he seen an image of a shark, a
sword-fish, or a Lonito, before which portions of food are
placed ; and these figures will be said to be fathers, grand-
fathers, ancestors of those who thus respect them. These
are indeed receptacles of the dead, not of their spirits, but of
their mortal remains or relics ; such cannot be called idols.
Although too they sometimes make other images and give
the names of the dead to them by way of remembrance, they
do not pray or sacrifice at such images, nor are they thought
holy. In Florida a rudely-shaped image of a man might
often have been seen in a sacred place near a village or by the
sea-shore, with cocoa-nuts tied to it or food laid at its feet;
this would be a tindalo, an image representing some powerful
man deceased; the food would be for him to eat; the image was
sacred. That is to say, the image was a memorial of some
tindalo, and eras not thought to have power in itself, or to be
inhabited by the ghost of the departed. Images representing
a tindalo were also cut on the posts of the canoe-houses, mere
memorials not much regarded, and approached without respect.
The stocks set up in Santa Cruz to represent the dead are
the simplest of memorials. In the Banks' Islands tree-fern
trunks cut into very rude figures of men were often seen—
memorials made at funeral feasts, having really no sacred
character at all. In the same islands the images carried
about at the Suqe feasts, and afterwards set up in the eating-
places proper to the rank they represent, may well be taken
for idols by those who are not acquainted with their meaning;
and so indeed may the figure, the mile, into which the post
of a house is cut, the building of which is celebrated by a
kolekole. In the New Hebrides, at Ambrym, images of the
dead whose death-feasts are to be celebrated are very elabo-
rately prepared, not with any attempt at representing theXI.
i75
Images not Idols. Stones.
figure of the particular deceased, but in conventional form ;
sometimes carved out of tree-fern trunks, sometimes fashioned
with wickerwork and sago spatkes, and painted and adorned.
Some shut up from common view by bamboo screens may
probably belong to secret societies. In the same island drums
are set up for funeral feasts with fantastic faces cut upon
them, and these remain as in a manner images of the deceased,
taken by visitors for idols or devil-drums. In the neighbour-
ing islands similar images are made.
Sacred places have almost always stones in them; it is
impossible to treat separately sacred places and sacred stones.
But whereas some places are sacred because stones are there,
the stones seen in other places have been taken there as part
of the furniture of a sacred place. Some places also and
stones may be said to have the origin of their sacredness in
graves or relics of the dead, and so have had their character
given them by men; while others are sacred because the
stones are there, the stones being sacred because associated
with a spirit. It is well here to recall the distinction which
seems so important between ghosts, the disembodied spirits
of men deceased, and spirits, of another order from the souls
of men, which have never been connected with a human
body; and to remember that, speaking generally, the religion
of the Solomon Islands is concerned with ghosts, that of the
Banks’ Islands and New Hebrides with spirits.
The sapred places and objects of the Solomon Islands
shall be first described ; and first of all those which belong to
sepulture. In Florida a sacred place is called vunutia.
These places are sometimes in the village, in which case they
are fenced round lest they should be rashly trodden upon,
sometimes in the garden-ground, sometimes in the bush. A
vunutia is sacred to a tindalo, ghost of power, and sacrifices
are offered to the tindalo in it. In some cases the vunutia
is the burial-place of the man who has become tindalo, in
others his relics have been translated there; in some cases
there is a shrine, and in some an image. There are generally
if not always stones in such a sacred place ; some stone lying176	Sacred Places and Things.	[ch.
naturally there has struck the fancy of the man who began the
cultus of the thulalo; he thinks it a likely place for the ghost
to haunt, and other smaller stones, and shells called peopeo,
are added. "When a vunuha has been established everything
within it is sacred, tambu, and belongs to the tindalo. If a
tree growing in one were to fall across a path no one would
step over it. In entering a vunuha a man who knows the
tindalo and sacrifices goes first, those who go with him
treading in his footsteps ; in going out no one will look back,
lest his soul should stay behind. No one would pass a vunuha
when the sun was so low as to cast his shadow into it; the
ghost would draw it from him. If there were a shrine in a
vunuha, only the sacrificer would enter it. Within it were the
weapons and other properties used by the object of worship
when alive, some said to be of great antiquity h The school-
boys now have broken down the shrines and pelted the images,
and the teachers have carried off the weapons. Dikea, a chief
at Ravu, had ten vunuha of his own, one close to a garden that
he wanted to enlarge. He was afraid to desecrate the sacred
place himself lest the tindalo should do him mischief; he
therefore sent for Gura and Kerekere, two young Christian
teachers, to do it for him, because they would not be afraid.
They took their scholars and went, the other boys not
venturing near. They found in the vunuha one large stone
in its natural bed, with smaller stones,peopeo shells, and leaves
of ginger round it, all of which they threw about. The two
tindalo to whom the pdace was sacred, Koli and Kukui,
appeared afterwards in dreams to the heathen men, and
threatened the desecrators; Dikea waited till it was clear
that they were none the worse, and then enlarged his garden.
At Saa in Malanta all burying-places where common
people are interred are so far sacred that no one will go there
1 The vunuha of Pelosule at Olevuga contained an image thought to be of
great antiquity ; a club sent to me from it is of a form never now seen in use. I
have an adze taken from the vunuha of Murini at Belaga, on which the soot
from sacrificial fires remains. The Rev. A. Penny has some tindalo relics
believed by the natives to be very ancient.xi.] Solomon Islands. Shrines. Sanctuaries. 177
without due cause; but those places where the remains of
people of rank are deposited, where sacrifices are offered, and
which may he called family sanctuaries, are regarded with
very great respect. Some of these are very ancient, the lio’a,
or powerful ghost, who is worshipped there, being a remote
ancestor. It sometimes happens that the man who has
offered the sacrifice in such a place dies without having fully
instructed his son in the proper chant of invocation with
which the lio'a ought to he approached. The young man who
succeeds him is then afraid to go there often, and begins a
new place, taking some ashes from the old sacrificial fire-place
to start the new sanctuary. It is not common in that part of
Malanta to build shrines for relics, hut it is sometimes done
when the o/ia, canoe-house, is full. Such shrines are common
in San Cristoval in the villages, and in the sacred places
where great men have been buried. To trespass on these
sacred places would be always likely to rouse the anger of the
ghosts, some of whom besides are known to be of a malignant
disposition. Such a one is Tapia, whose haunt is at the
mouth of a river near Ha’ani, and sacrifice to whom has
been already described.
There are sacred places, horvever, in the Solomon Islands
which are not places of sepulture, though none probably the
sacredness of which does not depend on the presence of a
ghost. In Florida the appearance of something wonderful
will cause any place to become a vunuha, the wonder being
an evidence of the ghostly presence. For example, a man
planted in the bush near Olevuga some cocoa-nut and almond-
trees, and not long after died. There then appeared among
the trees a white kanclora, cuscus, a great rarity. This was
assumed to be the appearance of the dead man, now a tindalo,
and was called by his name. The place became a vunuha ; no
one would gather the cocoa-nuts and almonds till two young
Christian men of late have taken the sacred place and trees
for a garden. Through this same part of the forest ran a
stream full of eels (which Olevuga people will not eat), among
them one so large that it was thought to be a tindalo, the
N178	Sacred Places and Things.	[ch.
abode or representative of some one dead; no one would
bathe in that stream or drink from it, except one pool in its
course which for convenience was not considered sacred. In
Boli also there was a sacred pool with a tindalo eel. In
Bugotu, in Ysabel, is a pool which is the abode of a ghost of
ancient times, and into which scraps of any person’s food are
thrown whom his enemies wish to charm. If the food is
quickly devoured by the fish, which are abundant in the pool,
the man will die ; if otherwise, the man who knows the place
and the ghost reports that the tindalo is unwilling to do
harm, his own friendly intervention having been probably
paid for by the one who knows that his life is aimed at. To
obtain good crops food is laid on stones in these sacred places,
and for success in fishing fragments of cooked fish; money
also is laid upon them in small quantities, the proprietor, so
to speak, of the vunuha, who is acquainted with the ghost, in
each case offering on behalf of those who desire the good
offices of the tindalo. Stones have thus a considerable place
among the sacred objects of the Solomon Islands, though not
a very conspicuous place, wherever their situation or something
in their appearance has associated them with some powerful
ghost. Those that are in open places are so far treated with
reverence that no one will go too near them, much less sit or
tread upon them, while those in secret sacred places become
in a way altars for sacrifice. But as in time the ghosts
become superseded by later successors, there remains but a
vague respectful feeling towards these stones. Small sacred
stones acquire a redoubled efficacy as they take their place
among the relics and implements of the deceased man of
power, now himself become a ghost of power; his sacrifices
had been wont to reach the tindalo whose presence was
secured to him by that stone, and now the presumed attach-
ment of his ghost to the same gives credit and efficacy to the
sacrifices offered near it or upon it to himself.
Living sacred objects in the Solomon Islands are chiefly
sharks, alligators, snakes, bonitos, and frigate-birds. Snakes
which haunt a sacred place are themselves sacred, as belongingxi.] Solomon Islands. Snakes. Sharks. i79
to or serving as an embodiment of the ghost; there was one
in Savo, to look upon which caused death. In San Cristoval
there is a special reverence for snakes as representatives of
the spirit-snake Kahausibware. Sharks are in all these
islands very often thought to be the abode of ghosts, as men
will before their death announce that they will appear as
sharks, and afterwards any shark remarkable for size or colour
which is observed to haunt a certain shore or rock is taken to
be some one’s ghost, and the name of the deceased is given to it.
Such a one was Sautahimatawa at Ulawa, a dreaded man-
eater to which offerings of porpoise teeth were made. At Saa
certain food, such as cocoa-nuts from certain trees, is reserved
to feed such a ghost-shark, and there are certain men of
whom it is known that after death they will be in sharks,
and who therefore are allowed to eat such food in the sacred
place. Other men will join themselves to their company; a
man will speak as with the voice of a shark -lida in him, and
say, ‘ give me to eat of that food.’ Such a man, if it appears
that he is really saka, possessed of supernatural power, will
after his death be counted himself as a shark lida; but it is
possible that he may fail. In Saa and in Ulawa if a sacred
shark had attempted to seize a man and he had escaped, the
people would be so much afraid of the shark’s anger that
they would throw the man back into the sea to be drowned.
These sharks also were thought to aid in catching the bonito,
for taking which supernatural power was necessary. There
was not long ago near Makira in San Cristoval a shark very
much respected, and fed with pig’s flesh ; it was believed to
have grown so large within a circle of rocks in which it lived
that it was no longer able to pass through the narrow
entrance. Sharks are very commonly believed to be the
abode of ghosts in Florida and Ysabel, and in Savo, where they
are particularly numerous; hence, though all sharks are not
venerated, there is no living creature so commonly held sacred
as a shark, and the tindalo of the shark, bagea, seem even to
form a class of powerful supernatural beings. In Savo not long
ago Lodo had a shark that he used to feed, and to which he used
n ai8o	Sacred Places and Things.	[ch.
to sacrifice. He swam out to it with food, called it by its
name, and it came to him. He had received his association
with this shark from his ancestors, in the same way in which
the connexion with other ghosts on shore and the knowledge
of them was handed down from generation to generation; for
this shark was a tindalo. There was the same association
with alligators ; a chief of Bugotu within my memory had
such a connexion with one, in which his son at Norfolk
Island thoroughly believed. There was a story current also
of an alligator which would come out of the sea and make
itself at home in the Florida village in which the man whose
ghost was in it had lived ; it was called by his name, and
though there was one man who had a special connexion with
it and was said to own it, it was friendly with all, and would
let children ride upon its back ; but it must be confessed that
though its existence was everywhere asserted, the village
where it could be seen was never ascertained. A lizard seen
to frecprent a house after a death was taken to be the ghost
returning to his old home. The sacred character of the
frigate-bird is certain ; the figure of it, however conventional,
is the most common ornament employed in the Solomon
Islands, and is even cut upon the hands of the Bugotu people ;
the oath by its name of daula is solemn and binding in
Florida, where Daula is a tindalo; as the liaula it is sacred at
Ulawa; just as many ghosts take up their abode in sharks,
many also and powerful to aid at sea are those which abide in
these birds. The ginger-plant has a certain sacred character
in Florida and the neighbouring islands ; and so have besides
the various objects, living and inanimate, from which the
respective divisions of the people refrain as a matter of
religious obligation.
In Santa Cruz there are stones about which stories are told
connecting them with the duka, whether ghosts or other
spirits, which are the objects of worship; and on these betel-
nuts are placed as offerings. Passing eastwards to the Banks’
Islands and the New Hebrides, a region is reached in which
religion concerns itself chiefly with spirits that never werexr.] Banks Islands and New Hebrides. Stones. 181
embodied in men, and in which therefore sacred places and
objects are generally such because of their connexion with
spirits. Burial-places are certainly held in respect, especially
the graves of men of importance in their time ; a certain
sacredness attaches to all belonging to the dead ; but it is to
the presence of a spirit, vui, that the special quality of most
sacred places and objects belongs. Iu the Banks’ Islands the
difference between a naturally sacred character and that which
follows upon an authoritative separation from common uses is
marked by the use of two words, roncjo and tapu or tambu,
(recognised in English as taboo,) corresponding with which in
the New Hebrides are sajmga and gogona. A naturally sacred,
rongo, sajmga, character is given by the presence of a spirit, or
association with one; and in by far the greater number of
instances it is found that a spirit is associated with a stone.
In the Banks' Islands a man would happen upon a boulder of
volcanic or coral rock, and would be struck with a belief that
a spirit was connected with it. The stone then was rongo, and
the place in which it lay was rongo ; the man constituted him-
self the master of the sanctuary; it was his marana within
which none but himself, or those brought in by him, could
come. Some stones are known to all, and are of more common
access. At Losalav in Saddle Island there is near the beach
a natural ring of stones which has been from time immemorial
a sacred place. The people call the ring a fence, the space
within it a garden, and the stones that lie within yam, banana,
kava pepper, and other roots and fruits commonly planted
by them. These stones were used for offerings of money
and sweet-smelling leaves, in the belief that the plants corre-
sponding to the stones would flourish and abound. The
character and influence of the spirit connected with any sacred
stone was judged by the shape of the stone. If a man came
upon a large stone with a number of small ones beneath it,
lying like a sow among her litter, he was sure that to offer
money upon it would bring him pigs. Such a stone is Ro
Tortoros at Mota; another Merina found and named from its
shape the Pig; his wealth in pigs resulted from his discovery.lS2
Sacred Places and Things.	[ch.
A stone with little disks upon it, a block of ancient, coral, was
good to bring in money ; any fanciful interpretation of a mark
on a stone or of its shape was enough to give a character to
the stone and to the spirit associated with it; the stone would
not have that mark or shape without a reason. Many of these
stones had names of their own, as above, as Puglava, ‘ much
money out at interest,’ at Luwai, and as more than one named
simply Money. The spirits belonging to these stones are
nameless; their connexion each with its own stone is not
clearly defined ; the stone, they say, is not the body of the
spirit, nor is the spirit like the soul of the stone, for a stone
certainly has no soul; they say that the spirit is at the stone,
o vui ape vatu, or near the stone, and it is the spirit not the
stone that acts. Some of these stones have an ancient
established sanctity; only the few who know how to approach
the spirit, will visit them for sacrifice, all others pass by with
awe, and will not tread the sacred ground about them. If by
some mishap one finds that he has intruded on a sacred place,
he hastens to engage the services of the man who knows the
stone, to make an offering to the spirit, lest he should suffer
from accident or sickness. There are some stones that have a
sinister reputation, as those near which an accident, has hap-
pened ; and there are some upon which it is dangerous for a man’s
shadow to fall; it is well to make offerings upon these, to keep
the spirit in good humour. A stone which is good for success
in fighting is also likely to do harm if not treated with due
observance ; some stones have the name of galaqar, as though
they would spring up like a trap upon the trespasser. Large
stones as they naturally lie have a high place among the sacred
objects of the New Hebrides. In Aurora some of these are
believed to have been produced in the ancient time of universal
darkness, gong tali, when, if two men were sitting at all apart,
a stone would grow up out of the ground between them ; such
are to be seen in the forest now, tall as a house and of strange
shapes. These have no names, as some others have had from
ancient times ; the common name for all sacred stones is matiu.
Some are vui who have turned into stones ; some in the sea arexi.]	New Hebrides. Stones.	183
men of old time turned into stones ; some never were anything
but stones, but have a vui connected with them ; some stones
above the waterfall are called the ‘ dwellers in the land,’ the
native people of the stream, and these have all their names.
They have much spiritual power, for they are in a way the
bodily presentment of the spirits to whom the stream belongs.
When men go eel-fishing, they secure success by offering a bit
of the first they catch upon the appropriate stone. Sacred
stones of all kinds have spiritual power, mana, as belonging to
spirits, in various degrees and to be obtained for various
purposes. Some cause sickness of the soul, some have great
power in a charm, when a bit taken with a prayer is pounded
up with a fragment of the person’s food to whom mischief is
to be wrought. Sometimes in Aurora a stone is smeared with
red earth; in Pentecost and Lepers’ Island one is anointed
with the juice of a young cocoa-nut. In the last-named
island no other offerings are made on stones ; men go to them
in the sacred places in the forest and call upon Tagaro. There
are also stones in the sea near Lepers’ Island which belong to
spirits, and which people in canoes will not approach lest
sharks should eat them.
The stones hitherto referred to are stones as they naturally
lie, the presence of which, because of their association with a
spirit, makes the ground about them a holy place, a fano rongo,
or ute sapuga. But small stones that could be carried about
had an active part in the native life of the Banks’ Islands and
the New Hebrides. The following are examples from the
Banks’ group. No garden was planted without stones buried
in the ground to ensure a crop. A piece of Astroea coral-stone
water-worn on the beach often bears a surprising likeness to a
bread-fruit. A man who should find one of these would try
its powers by laying it at the root of a tree of his own, and a
good crop would prove its connexion with a spirit good for
bread-fruit. The happy owner would then for a consideration
take stones of less marked character from other men, and let
them lie near his, till the mana in his stone should be imparted
to theirs. Likeness to other fruits or tubers would be the[CH.
184	Sacred Places and Things.
ground of a belief in similar powers. Stones were much used
by weather-doctors. To make sunshine it might be enough
only to smear a standing stone with red earth ; but it was
very effectual to wind about a very round stone, a vat loa,
sunstone, with red braid, and stick it with owls’ feathers to
represent rays, singing in a low voice the proper spell, and
then to hang it on some high tree, a banyan or a casuarina in
a sacred place. The stone to represent the sun might also be
laid upon the ground with a circle of white rods radiating
from it for its beams. There are stones of a remarkably long
shape called in the Banks’ Islands tamale y any an, that is,
‘ eating ghost’; these are so powerful from the presence with
them of a ghost, not of a spirit, that if a man’s shadow fall on
one it will draw out his soul from him, so that he will die.
Such stones therefore are set in a house to guard it; any one
sent to his house by the owner in his absence will call out
bis sender’s name, lest the ghost should think he has bad
intentions and do him a mischief. Other stones, also con-
nected with ghosts, have such power that when the owner of
one puts it under his pillow and dreams of another man, that
man will die. One who has such a stone is paid by an enemy
to destroy a man in this way, and ‘ dreams him to an end,’ ti
qore mol. These stones are exceptional as deriving their power
from the dead. Some again are called lanyaroa, a name no
doubt the same with that of the brothers of Oat. These a
man would carry with him in a bag, or hang up in his house.
If one went into a house where these stones were hanging and
meddled with the property of the owner, and after a while an
accident were to befall him, it would lie said that the lanyaroa
had done it. Others, called tarunylea and varamrlca, were
swung about in an invaded place to take away the courage of
the invaders. Others were hung as amulets, soasoa, about a
man’s neck to keep him safe in danger; others, again, would
straighten the aim and strengthen the arm to shoot. There
were others that women would take with them to bed in
hopes of children. The stones on which, or with reference to
which, sacrifices are made are by no means always such asXI.]
iS5
Sacred Stones. Heaps.
naturally lie in situ, but are small, and may be lost. In such
a case the owner of the stone, knowing that ghosts have
hidden it, cries to them and they restore it; although such a
tano-oloolo is such by virtue of its association not with ghosts
but spirits.
Lepers’ Island may supply examples of the use of portable
stones in the Northern New Hebrides. Besides those which
lie naturally in the bush, in the tauten, the sacred spot in
which Tagaro is invoked, there are sacred stones which have
more or less mana, and are effective for various purposes. Some
are hung up in bags in the house. Some of these are in-
herited from ancient times, and some are new; some are good
in fighting, some will produce food, some will cause a failure
of crop; none will cause a large general crop for the year
(that must be done by forms of words), and none are good for
fishing-. None are used in planting a garden; in that the
juice of a young cocoa-nut is sprinkled with charms upon the
ground, and the shells are set up at the sides. Each stone has
its appropriate charm with Tagaro’s name, sung over it when
it is put to use.
Though the superstitious regard for stones is so commonly
shewn, and the superstitious uses of them are so multifarious,
there are yet practices with regard to them in which the na-
tives deny that there is any superstitious or religious meaning
and intent, natural as it is that an observer should suppose it.
Such is the practice of throwing stones upon a heap by the
way-side. Such a heap is to be seen at Valuwa in Saddle
Island; each travelling stranger as he arrives casts his stone
upon it. The natives declare that their notion is that days
accumulate like stones; a man as he adds his stone to the
heap 1 puts his day upon it.’ At Pun in the same island is a
heap of fruits of various trees ; a stranger as he comes gathers
any fruit by the wayside and adds it to the heap. In each
case it is a custom of the place ; the people there like it to be
kept up, because the heaps shew how many visitors they have.
Between Valuwa and Motlav the path runs between two large
stones: travellers going from Motlav to Valuwa kick theSacral /’laces and Thin as.
i .S6
n.
nl,ono l,o I,lio rip-ld, hh I,hoy |iii,hh, ii,rid Hii.y, 1 lioh ViiJiiwii, Iro non,r
mid Mol,In,v lii.r; krnvolloi'H l,o MolJuv kick l.lio ohlior hI.oiio
iukI Hiiy, ‘ l/el, Mol,In,v ho non,r mid ViiJiiwii, ii.liir.’ Thin im'iiin
in no old oiihI.oiii, riol, HorioiiHly Uioupdil, of. AnolJioi' oimiorn
ooiiiinon l,o I,ho ItnnI<h’ and Solomon liJandu in Mini ol 1,11rowi11>>-
hI.iokh, loavoH, or hIoiioh upon a lionp al, a plnoo ol’ Bleep doHoonl,
or whom a dillionll, |in 1,11 hop-uiH. They M.hrow away hheir
Inl-i^'iio ; ’ |,hoy oorl.ailily do nol, neknowlod/'-o Uial, I,hoy rnalio
a prayer or ollorinp' h
Sl renuiH, or rnlJier pooln in Hl ronniH, nro Hiiorod in I,ho I’anloi'
IhIiiihIh |»y ronHon ol I,ho proHonoo ol’ a Hpiril,. Thom in al,
ViiJiiwii, ii. doop hole inl.o wliioh no ono damn l,o look ; il I,ho
rollool.ion ol'a iiiiiii’h I’iioo hIioiiM lull upon I,ho huiI'iico ol' I,ho
wal,or ho would dio; I,ho Hpiril, would lay hold upon liiit Ido liy
inoaiiH ol il,. Ti'ooh aro Hnorod in a miorod plnoo; a hanyan
oil,on harhoui'H in I ho InhyrinlJi ol' iIh hI.oiiih ami root,h ii, miorod
Hfinke, I,hnl, iw, a Hpiril., and in I,lion loro il.nolC Hnorod. Thorn
arc, howovnr, I,wo l.rooH which have a oorl.nin in heron I HitorodnoHH
id I,lour own, I,ho oaHiinrinil,, am, and I,ho oyoiiH, iiirlc. NolJiin/c
onn ho more weird and pJionlJy iJin.n an ap;od oanuarina ulnndinp;
alone on a wind heal,on heneli or n inp; on a lol'hy (dill', with
haro prey hI.oiii and HhadowloHH lolinp'O, never wilJioul, a voice
whlHporirifi' in a oaliri or hIirickinp; in a hreoy.e. The prononoo
ol ono ol I/Iioho kroon pdvoH a oorl.nin Hanoi,iky nnd awlulnoMH V,
a plnoo; honoo Ui I,ram1,lake I,ho word ‘Hanoi,nary’ I,ho honk
1 Many ynarn iu/o I o'fjKnrvnd hnaido w, paUi in a wood in Nor ini It Inland a
Ii 1*1*1 n in aji of' Mf/ink« ovidonf/l y Uirown Un-rn In/ Mnlanoe.ian Imyn paKMinf/on I,loir
way f,o lii*,li at/ Uin loo|, of ni.ii-ji cJiff'u of diflinidi* tin;-,cent,.	I ‘/njuirnd of my
companions, wlm	iJ*:<I and did nnf* answer, Lotiy al'l.er, having road Mr
I'or Ik-,n' Naf/ijraJisf V, vVandorinj/s in I,In? IC11.H l-nrn A rnldpnlaj/o, I j.nl, Uin f |in-sf,jon
ayajn f,o I>oys IVn/n tin; flanks' Islands and from Mn/'ida. I'oMj p/avo I,In-, Mann,
account,, U»al< it- wiw d*/n<; f,o ensure a Main descent/ in U/af, place, a/id f,ljat, if/ was
in l.l/eir islands ; I/oUj declared Uiaf/ U/ere was nn f,J»ouj/ld, of' Maoril'/oo
or oliorj/if/, and no prayer, only, il' anyUii/ij/ was said, Un* words ' There (zoom
/ny fat/iyuo. Mr. I' o# !#<-,« menf/ion • a similar practice twice, once in Humatra
^p 1 where I,In porters placed handfuls */!' leaves on a stone and p/ayed for
a dry day and j^ood luek ; and aprain i/i Timor ^p	where al/ the commence
in' nl, of a steep and precipitous descent the natives laid leaves and twigs on a
nrnund ‘ f,*) nn«ur«: a xal'n d<; nt,.'Sharks. Snakes.
*>•]
Trees.
1S7
Mota word is 1a no-ant ant, place of casuarinas. The evens is
also sacred, ro/iffo, but it is cut. down without hesitation by the
natives if it be in the way. Crotons and dracaenas have a
certain sacredness in connexion with the dead. In Araga,
Pentecost Island, there is a strange belief that the cycas-tree
turns into a young man or woman, like the snake to be here-
after mentioned ; only the ear remains unchanged, it shews a
leaflet of the tree.
The living creatures which are most commonly held sacred
in the Banks’ Islands and New Hebrides are sharks and
snakes; all kingfishers have at least something of a sacred
character, and some owls, crabs, lizards, eels, and such things
as haunt a place sacred because of the presence of a spirit. In
the Banks' Islands a shark may ben tangaroa, a sort of familiar
spirit, or the abode of one. Some years ago Manurwar, son
of Mala, the chief man in A anna Lava, had such a shark, for
which he had given money to a Maewo man to send it- to
him. It was very tame, and would come up to him when he
went down to the beach at Nawono, and follow along in the
surf as he walked along the shore. Tursal, my informant, had
himself seen it- do this. This corresponds with what has
been above related of Lode and his shark at Snvo ; and the
difference is instructive that in the Banks’ Islands the shark
was a spirit and in the Solomon Islands it was a ghost. In
the New Hebrides some men have the power, as the natives
believe, of changing themselves into sharks, as maybe seen in
the story of Tarkeke. A great deal of superstition is con-
nected with snakes, not only because one is sure to be seen
about a sacred place, but because the reptile is often thought
to be otherwise connected with a mi, spirit, to have a spirit
near it. In Mota there are no land-snakes; in the other
islands of the Banks’ group some of enormous size are said to
live in banyan-trees, and are held sacred. At \ aluwa there
are snakes which strangers are not allowed to see, lest some
misfortune should follow. Ordinary snakes are killed. Those
that- are held sacred are not fed or worshipped, but such 11s are
the familiars of individuals who know them receive sacrifices.188	Sacred Places and Things.	[ch.
In the New Hebrides snakes are perhaps more regarded than
in the Banks’ Islands. A native of Pentecost Island, if ho
sees one in a sacred place or in a house, will think that there
is some reason for its appearing to him ; he will pour over
himself the juice of a young cocoa-nut, and ever afterwards
expect to find the world go well with him through the
influence of the spirit, or it may be of the ghost, associated
with the reptile. In Lepers’ Island if a snake haunts a man’s
house, more particularly if it be a great man’s house, they are
persuaded that it is a spirit; it is gorjona, not to be lightly ap-
proached ; it brings good luck to the house, and makes the
owner rise in the liuqe society. The house itself is treated
with respect; no one will throw a stone at it, or mount upon
it; the snake would resent such disrespect and make the
offender ill.
There is an amphibious sea-snake marked with bands of
dark and light colour, which in the Banks’ Islands and New
Hebrides is always more or less dreaded whenever it is seen.
In these islands it is generally called mae, and it is this kind
of snake which becomes the familiar spirit of those who have,
or profess to have, intercourse with it. In Araga, Pentecost,
every mae is believed to have the supernatural power of mana ;
one will do harm to men by taking away bits of their food into
a sacred place, upon which their lips will swell and their bodies
break out with ulcers. Some men turn into these snakes,
and these snakes again turn into men. A mae does not behave
like an ordinary snake ; it shews that it is something different,
for example, by washing its young. In a certaingamal, club-
house, in Araga, is a hollow piece of the wood of a certain tree
they call hvgo, in which is water. In the night a mother mae
used to come and wash her young one in this water ; the
people sleeping there used to hear it cry and knew what it
was. They made a pipe to imitate the cry exactly, and use
it now. The belief is most strong in all these islands that
this snake turns itself into a young man or woman, generally
into a young woman, to tempt one of the opposite sex; to
yield to the temptation causes death.XI.]
Changeling Snakes.	189
It is possible to discover the deceit, but the discovery is
often made too late. In Araga the changed mae may be
known by the skin under the neck, which remains unchanged.
It was only lately that a youth died at Vathuqe in that
island who had been enticed by a changeling girl; he saw
her neck and came back and told his people; they tried the
proper remedy of smoke in vain. There is another test used
in that island ; the suspected temptress is induced to sit upon
a nettle-tree, and is convicted by her ignorance of its character.
In the Banks’ Islands a young man, as one has related his
experience to myself, coming back from his fishing on the
rocks towards sunset, will see a girl with her head bedecked
with flowers beckoning to him from the slope of the cliff up
which his path is leading him ; he recognizes the countenance
of some girl of his own or a neighbouring village ; he stands
and hesitates, and thinks she must be a mae; he looks more
closely, and observes that her elbows and knees bend the
wrong way; this reveals her true character, and he flies. If
a young man can strike the temptress with a dracaena leaf she
turns into her own shape and glides away a snake. At Gaua,
Santa Maria, a man met one of these standing or variegated
snakes, as they call them, mae tiratira, valeleas, on the beach
at night in the form of a woman of the place. Seeing by her
reversed joints what she was, he offered to go to the village
and bring her money. When he returned he found her wait-
ing for him in her proper form as a mae; he scattered money
upon her back, and she went off with it into the sea. More
lately in the same place a young man just returned from
‘labour’ in Queensland, saw one of These in the form of a
young married woman of his village. She turned into the
stalk of a creeper, as in that island it is believed that these
creatures do. It is believed also that if the man can cut the
creeper short he will live ; this young man accordingly broke
this vine off short and got safe home. But since that time
there has been something in the night disturbing those who
sleep in the same club-house with him, and he has confessed
that it is this snake-woman who comes to him in the night;190	Sacred Places and Things.
and all believe him. Sometimes a young man will run home at
night and lose his senses ; they are sure that ho has been with
a mae. Sometimes one will come in and lie down and sicken ;
they press him, and he confesses what he has done and seen,
and then he dies. Nothing seems to be more fixed in the
minds of natives, even those who have some education, than
the persuasion that all this is true.
The sacred character of the kingfisher is remarkable, and
the reason of it hard to find. In San Cristoval a kingfisher
pecks the head of the lately separated soul which has not yet
realized its condition, and it sinks into a ghost; the natives
therefore kill it, but young ones spring up from the blood of
every one they kill. In the Banks’ Islands every kingfisher,
sitjo, is sacred, roiujo ; a spirit is connected with it; not one is
ever killed or eaten. It is a singular thing that they make
halcyon days ; it is the name of the kingfisher that carries the
magic power in the charm for sunshine, forthesigo is thought
to control storms and rain, and the charm calls on it to eat
the rising waves and make a calm. They declare that there
are kingfishers at sea as well as on land, some of a species only
seen at sea away from land. If a man going out on a journey
hears a kingfisher cry, he thinks it is angry and forbids his
going; he therefore sings a charm : ‘ Tagar we me-e, nelehet
ni van barlar, ne lee we ni ver gor nangek nie-e ! Good luck to
me, let mischief pass beside me, let good hap come round
before my face 11 ’
1 In prose Mota 1 Togara wia raa, o lea we tatas ni van par agar a, o lea ice
■wia ni viro yoro nanayolc maCHAPTER XII.
MAGIC.
That invisible power which is believed b}' the natives to
cause all such effects as transcend their conception of the
regular course of nature, and to reside in spiritual beings,
whether in the spiritual part of living men or in the ghosts
of the dead, being imparted by them to their names and to
various things that belong to them, such as stones, snakes,
and indeed objects of all sorts, is that generally known as
mana. Without some understanding of this it is impossible
to understand the religious beliefs and practices of the Mela-
nesians; and this again is the active force in all they do and
believe to be done in magic, white or black. By means of
this men are able to control or direct the forces of nature, to
make rain or sunshine, wind or calm, to cause sickness or re-
move it, to know what is far off in time and space, to bring
good luck and prosperity, or to blast and curse. No man, how-
ever, has this power of his own ; all that he does is done by
the aid of personal beings, ghosts or spirits; he cannot be said,
as a spirit can, to be mana himself, using the word to express
a quality; he can be said to have mana, it may be said to be
with him, the word being used as a substantive. In the New
Hebrides, the Banks’ Islands, the Solomon Islands about
Florida, as in New Zealand and many of the Pacific Islands,
the word in use is mana. In Santa Cruz a different word.
malete, is used, which bears however the same meaning.
At Saa in Malanta all persons and things in which this
supernatural power resides are said to be saka, that is, hot.
Ghosts that are powerful are saka ; a man who has know-192	Magic.	[ch.
ledge of the things which have spiritual power is himself
saka ; one who knows a charm which is saka mutters it
over water, sard e, and makes the water 1 hot,’ ha asaka. The
people of Mala Masiki, the lesser part of the island, which
is cut in two not far from its south-eastern end by a narrow
channel, think that the men of the larger part, Mala Paina,
are very saka. If one of these visiting the Saa people
points with his finger, suisui, there is danger of death or
calamity; if one of them spits on a man he dies at once.
By whatever name it is called, it is the belief in this super-
natural power, and in the efficacy of the various means by
which spirits and ghosts can be induced to exercise it for the
benefit of men, that is the foundation of the rites and practices
which can be called religious ; and it is from the same belief
that everything which may be called Magic and Witchcraft
draws its origin. Wizards, doctors, weather-mongers, prophets,
diviners, dreamers, all alike, everywhere in the islands, work
by this power. There are many of these who may be said to
exercise their art as a profession ; they get their property and
influence in this way. Every considerable village or settle-
ment is sure to have some one who can control the weather and
the waves, some one who knows how to treat sickness, some
one who can work mischief with various charms. There may
be one whose skill extends to all these branches ; but generally
one man knows how to do one thing' and one another. This
various knowledge is handed down from father to son, from
uncle to sister’s son, in the same way as is the knowledge of
the rites and methods of sacrifice and prayer ; and very often
the same man who knows the sacrifice knows also the making
of the weather, and of charms for many purposes besides.
But as there is no order of priests, there is also no order of
magicians or medicine-men. Almost every man of considera-
tion knows how to approach some ghost or spirit, and has
some secret of occult practices. Knowledge of either kind can
be bought, if the possessor chooses to impart it to any other
than the heirs of whatever he has besides.
There is no doubt that those who exercise these arts reallyxii.]	Native Belief in Charms.	193
believe in the power of them as much as the people on whose
behalf they exercise them. In some cases there is conscious
deceit, such as has been many times confessed by those who
have become Christians. A young woman of my acquaintance
in the Banks’ Islands had a reputation for power of healing
toothache by a charm which had been taught her by an
aged relative deceased. She would lay a certain leaf rolled
up with certain muttered words upon the part inflamed ; and
when in course of time the pain subsided, she would take out
and unfold the leaf, and shew within it the little white maggot
that was the cause of the trouble. When Christian teaching
began in the island she made no difficulty about disclosing
the secret, and all laughed over it together. It is likely
enough also that a weather-doctor observed for himself, and
was taught by his predecessor to observe, the signs of change
and steadiness in weather, and brought his charms to work or
kept them back according to his observations. But the means
he used seemed to him to be so naturally effective, and had
been so often followed by the results at which they were
aimed, that he seriously believed in them ; and if sometimes
they failed conspicuously, as when at Ysabel the weather-
doctor’s own house was blown down by a storm on the very
day on wThich he had warranted a calm, there was also the ex-
planation that another counter-charm had been at work and
had been stronger. Such a supposition tended to confirm
much more than to weaken the belief in the power of weather-
doctors. It is not only in Melanesian islands that whatever
confirms a belief is accepted and whatever makes against it is
not weighed. Those who practised the various kinds of magic
did believe very much in their own art.
Though those who practise these various arts cannot be
separated into various classes or orders, or even regarded as
an order by themselves, inasmuch as they are mixed among
the population, and practise as they know some more some
fewer arts, it will be almost necessary to classify their
practices. These may be arranged under the heads of Sick-
ness, Weather, Witchcraft, Dreams, Prophecy and Divination,
o194	Magic.	[ch.
Ordeals, Poison, Curses. In all these whatever is done is
believed to be effected by the mana of spirits and ghosts,
acting through various media, and brought to bear by secret
forms of words to which the power to work is given by the
names of the spirits or ghosts, or of the living or lifeless
things to which this mysterious influence is attached.
(i) Sickness. Any sickness that is serious is believed to be
brought about by ghosts or spirits ; common complaints such
as fever and ague are taken as coming in the course of nature.
To say that savages are never ill without supposing a super-
natural cause is not true of Melanesians ; they make up their
minds as the sickness comes whether it is natural or not, and
the more important the individual who is sick, the more likely
his sickness is to be ascribed to the anger of a ghost whom he
has offended, or to witchcraft. No great man would like to
be told that he was ill by natural weakness or decay. The
sickness is almost always believed to be caused by a ghost, not
by a spirit. It happens, indeed, as in the New Hebrides, where
spirits are the chief objects of religious regard, that a man
knows that he has trespassed on a sacred place belonging to
some spirit, or has an ill-wisher who has a spirit for a helper,
and supposes therefore when he is ill that a spirit has brought
his sickness on him. But generally it is to the ghosts of the
dead that sickness is ascribed in the eastern islands as well as
in the western ; recourse is had to them for aid in causing and
removing sickness; and ghosts are believed to inflict sickness
not only because some offence, such as a trespass, has been
committed against them, or because one familiar with them
has sought their aid with sacrifice and spells, but because there
is a certain malignity in the feeling of all ghosts towards the
living, who offend them by being alive. All human powers
which are not merely bodily are believed to be enhanced by
death ; the ghost therefore of an ill-conditioned powerful man
is naturally thought ready to use his increased powers of
mischief.
Thus in Florida it is a tinelalo, that is, a ghost of power,
that causes illness ; it is a matter of conjecture which of theXII.]
Florida. Sickness.
J95
known tindalos it may be. Sometimes a person has reason to
think, or fancies, that he has offended his dead father, uncle,
or brother. In that case no special intercessor is required :
the patient himself or one of the family will sacrifice, and beg
the tinclalo to take the sickness away; it is a family affair.
Sometimes a sick man thinks it is his own familiar tindalo,
and leaves his house to avoid him. If the cause of sickness is
a matter of conjecture, a mane kisu, one who understands these
things, a doctor, is called in. He will say that he knows the
offended ghost; if it be a child he will say that it has trod in
the sacred place, vunuha, of some tindalo whom he calls his own ;
or else the parents will guess or enquire where the child has
been, and will send for the •mane kisu who has influence with
the tindalo of that place. The doctor called in will bind upon
the patient the leaves belonging to his tindalo, will chew
ginger and blow into the patient’s ears and on that part of the
skull which is soft in infants, will call on the name of the
tindalo, and beg him to remove the sickness. When he makes
his request, speaking in a low voice, he is said to kokoe
liulivuti, to speak, as the word is now used, in prayer. If the
sickness continues, another tindalo or another mane kisu is tried.
If no conjecture can be made as to the ghost probably offended,
any mane kisu, for a fee in money, will undertake to get his
own tindalo, who must know, to intercede with the one who is
doing the mischief. In some cases it may be a likely guess
that some one who has ill-will towards the sufferer has set his
tindalo to afflict, as they say to eat, the patient; he then may
take money to call off the eating ghost. If he will not do this,
another more powerful tindalo may be engaged through
another mane kisu, who will prevail over the original assailant
and drive him off. While these remedies are being tried the
patient either recovers or dies ; if he recovers, the doctor under
whose treatment he began to mend has the credit and good
payment; if he dies, the power of the tindalo that has prevailed
throughout is established. There is also mixed with this
treatment something like the use of medicine, the effect of
which, however, is always supposed to depend upon the tindalo
o 2196	Magic.	[ch.
engaged. The mane kisu knows certain herbs, and warms them
in a cocoa-nut shell over the fire ; the steam applied to the
patient drives away the pain or the disease. For cough
an infusion is drunk, the leaves being thrown away. The
doctors also practise massage, kneading, squeezing, and rubbing
the body and limbs of the patient. In Ysabel (and no doubt
also in Florida) the doctor called in will discover the tindatho
who causes the complaint he has to treat, by suspending a
stone or heavy ornament at the end of a string which he holds
in his hand, and calling over the names of the lately deceased ;
when the name of him who causes the disease is called the
stone swings in answer. Then it remains to ask what shall he
given to appease the anger of the ghost—a mash of yams,
a fish, a pig, a man. The answer is given in the same way;
whatever is desired is offered on the dead man’s grave, and the
sickness goes.
In Wango in San Cristoval the natives not long ago believed
that the ghosts, there called ’adaro, actually fought with one
another over the sick with spears. A man would have a
grudge against another, and pay a wizard to bring an ’adaro to
£ eat ’ him, to do him mischief. It would become known that
he had given a pig, as it might he, to that wizard, and the
man whose life was aimed at, or his friends, would go to
another wizard, and by a larger fee secure as they hoped a
stronger ’adaro for their side. The two ghosts would fight it
out, or probably more than one wrould he engaged on either
side ; the man would sicken, die, or keep his health, according
to the issue of the unseen battle. Ghosts that haunt the sea
are believed to shoot men on the reefs or in canoes with fish
darted at them invisibly; or if, as often happens, a flying-fish
or gar-fish springs from the waves and strikes a man, they say
that an ’adaro shoots it; it is no common fish, the man will die.
Sick persons are commonly treated with ginger and other
roots and leaves, and with water over which a charm has been
muttered to give it healing power from an ’adaro.
In Santa Cruz the cause of sickness is an offended d-uka,
ghost or spirit, and the doctor called in is a mendeha, a man197
xii.] Treatment of Sickness in Santa Cruz.
with whom is the malete, which corresponds to the more
common mana, and who has a clutca belonging to himself; for
examjile, at Neula, where Neobla is the clutca in vogue, they
always send for Neobla’s mendeka. The doctor comes and sits
by the sick person, expecting the coming of the clutca to him.
Presently he cries with a loud voice that he is come, and then
he gives the reason, supplied him by the clutca, why the man
is sick, and directs what satisfaction is to be made. The
doctor always receives a fee. If the patient dies, the reason
given is that some other clutca with whom the doctor is not on
good terms has been at work; if he recovers he gives a pig
for the clutca, and a bit of it is put before the stock which
represents him. Sometimes an offended clutca will shoot a
man, and the mencletca will extract the arrow-head, working it
down from above into the sick man’s foot with sweet herbs
and cocoa-nut juice, singing in a low voice and muttering his
charms, and finally bringing out a splinter of tree-fern wood
from the sole. Sometimes very bitter juice squeezed out of
certain leaves is given to the patient to drink, sometimes the
Man pishing shot by a sea-ghost. Native drawing.[98
Magic.
[CH.
treatment of a local pain is to squeeze leaves and herbs upon
the part; but it is the malete, and not the natural property of
these medicines, that works the cure.
In the Banks’ Islands the (jhmana practised the same arts
with his brethren of the west1. He worked the cause of pain
and disease downwards, and extracted it; he stroked the seat of
pain and spat; he sucked out or bit out from the seat of pain
a fragment of wood, bone, or leaf; for swellings he chewed
certain herbs and leaves and blew, pupsa.g, upon the place ; he
used fomentations and poultices of mallow leaves, for example,
with some knowledge of the healing and soothing properties
in them ; he gave the patient to drink water from a hollow in
a sacred stone, or water in which stones full of mana for this
purpose had been laid, from which probably European medicine
came to be called pei mana ; and all was done by virtue of the
mana conveyed in the charms sung over the remedy employed,
songs which were themselves called mana, or in the muttered
words, wosarj, which took the disease away. Women had a
share in the practice of this art; some of them knew the
charms by which the soul of a sick child which a ghost was
drawing away could be recalled, and the ghost driven off; the
woman blowing on the child’s eyes and calling the name of
the attacking ghost. The ffismana by no means confined
himself to the care of the sick, all ways of working by means
of mana were in his line of practice ; women, however, did not
1 ‘ One of our native mission agents in Fiji assured me very earnestly that he
had the power of expelling disease-causing spirits, and he gave me a minute
description of his treatment. He passed his hands over the patient’s body till
he detected the spirit by a peculiar fluttering sensation in his finger ends. He
then endeavoured to bring it down to one of the extremities, a foot or hand.
Much patience and care were required, because these spirits are very cunning,
and will double back and hide themselves in the trunk of the body if you
give them a chance. “ And even,” he said, “ when you have got the demon
into a leg or an arm which you can grasp with your fingers, you must take care
or he will escape you. He will lodge in the joints, and hide himself among the
bones. Hard indeed it is to get him out of a joint! But when you have drawn
him down to a finger or a tee, you must pull him out with a sudden jerk, and
throw him far away, and blow after him lest he should return.” ’—Rev. L.
Fison.xn.] Sickness in Neiv Hebrides. Weather.
199
practise harmful arts1. In the New Hebrides the healing of
the sick belongs in Aurora to the gismana, in Lepers’ Island
to the tangaloe ngovo, in Pentecost to the mata taivaga, to those,
that is to say, who have the knowledge of the songs and
charms, believed to have come down from Tagaro himself, by
which man a is conveyed and applied. In Aurora those who
dream have the larger practice. In Pentecost and Lepers’
Island the juice of a very young cocoa-nut, on which the doctor
has blown, with a charm muttered or sung, is drunk by the
patient or rubbed upon him, and water, with man a. imparted
to it in the same way, is also used. Sickness is generally
supposed to be caused by ghosts, but as the sacred places and
objects which may be profaned or lightly used belong to spirits,
these are believed often to be angry, and to inflict pain and
disease. The power of a spirit is also brought by a charm or
curse to harm a man ; it is natural, therefore, that in the treat-
ment of the sick recourse should be had to spirits, and above
all to Tagaro, rather than to ghosts. The name of Tagaro
controls both ghosts and spirits. In Pentecost the doctor will
forbid some kind of food to the patient, and when he recovers
bring him some of it to eat as a proof that he is well. In both
islands women know how to relieve pain. In Pentecost the
women use leaves as poultices, and when they take them off
profess to take away with them the cause of pain—a snake, a
lizard, something from the beach; ‘but,’ says a native who
has undergone the treatment, ‘ no one sees the thing but the
women, and the pain remains.’ In Lepers’ Island the female
practitioner rubs the patient downwards with a bunch of leaves,
such as she knows to have the proper qualities, singing and
muttering her charms. She will work one day upon the head,
and go on working downwards day by day, squeezing and
1 ‘ They have a nice woman or two on the island (Mota) who are credited
with a knowledge of bone-setting. One is a sensible woman, an old friend of
mine, so I went for her and set her to work. She pokes and pulls about, and
manages to get the bone into its place.’—Rev. J. Palmer. The extreme
dislike of natives, of the Banks’ Islands at least, to washing when they are
sick does not seem to have any superstitious origin; they dread a chill.200
Magic.
[CH.
rubbing- and drawing- down the cause of pain, till she produces
at last in her bunch of leaves a stone or a bone, or the bit of
food perhaps by which the patient has been bewitched. In
Pentecost if a man is delirious they say a viae, that snake of
mysterious nature, is in his stomach. A doctor will then
breathe his charm into a dry cocoa-nut husk which he has set
on fire; the patient sits over the smoke, and the snake, which
is a ghost or spirit, is driven out.
(2) Weather. In all these islands it is believed that spirits
and ghosts have power over the weather ; it follows, therefore,
that the men who have familiar intercourse with spirits and
o-hosts are believed to be able to move them to interfere for
O
wind or calm, sunshine or rain, as may be desired. The
spirits and ghosts also have imparted power to forms of words,
stones, leaves, and other things, which therefore of themselves
affect the weather ; and there is also a certain natural con-
gruity between some of these things and the effect they
produce, which seems to make them suitable vehicles of power.
The men, therefore, who have and know these things have
with them man a which they can use to benefit or to afflict
friends and enemies, and to turn either way as it is made
worth their while to turn it. There are everywhere, therefore,
in these islands weather-doctors or weather-mongers who can
control the aerial powers, and arc willing to supply wind,
calm, rain, sunshine, famine, and abundance at a price. These
were generally also masters of other charms than those which
affect the weather, some knew one weather charm and some
another; but there were generally in a community enough
for all requirements. Their arts once secret are now pretty
well known. In Florida the mane nggehe vigona, when a calm
was wanted, tied together the leaves appropriate to his vigona
and hid them in the hollow of a tree where water was, calling
upon the vigona spirit with the proper charm. This process
would bring down rain to make the calm. If sunshine was
required he tied the appropriate leaves and creeper-vines to
the end of a bamboo, and held them over a fire. He fanned
the fire with a song to give mana to the fire, and the fire gaveXII.]
Weather Doctors.
201
■///ana to the leaves. Then he climbed a tree and fastened the
bamboo to the topmost branch ; as the wind blew about the
flexible bamboo the mana was cast abroad, and the sun shone
out. To stop sunshine ginger-leaves were bound tight to-
gether with others and kept in the wizard’s bag.
In the seafaring life of the Solomon Islands the maker of
calms is a valuable citizen. The Santa Cruz people also are
great voyagers, and their mendeka wizards control the weather
on their expeditions, taking with them the stock which
represents their duka, and setting it up in the cabin on the
stage of the canoe. The presence of his familiar duka being
thus secured, the weather-doctor will undertake to provide fair
wind or calm. In the same island to get sunshine the wizard
puts up some burnt wood into a tree ; to get rain he throws
down water at the foot of the stock of Tinota, an ancient
duka ; to make wind he waves the branch of the tree which
has this power ; in each case he chants the appropriate charm.
The same things were done and similar methods followed in
the Banks’ Islands with the mana songs and mana stones h The
art is the same in the New Hebrides. To get rain the Aurora
gismana puts a tuft of leaves which are mana for the purpose
into the hollow of a stone, and upon this some branches of the
piper methysticum, used for kava, pounded and crushed; to
these he adds the one of his collection of stones which has mana
for rain ; all is done with the singing of charms with Tagaro’s
name, and the whole is covered over. The mass ferments,
and steam charged with mana goes up and makes clouds and
rain. It will not do to pound the pepper too hard, lest the
wind should blow too strong. This pepper is very powerful
also for weather-making in Lepers’ Island. To make a hot
sun, the wizards hold branches of the plant, which they have
1 As above, page 184. ‘There was a large shell filled with earth, and a
rounded oblong stone standing up in it, covered with red ochre, the whole thing
surrounded by sticks, a sort of fence with a creeper twined in and out.
I innocently asked my friend what this was ; “ Me vil goro 0 lan nan wa vus ”
he answered, “the wind is fenced or bound round, lest it blow hard.” I asked
whether the wind would not blow hard, and he answered “ No, not while that
lasts. When it rots then it can blow again.” ’—Rev. J. Palmer.202
[CH.
Magic.
already filled with mana by charms sung over them, over the
fire in a house ; as they wilt, dry up and burn, so will the land.
To make a famine they hang cocoa-nut fronds, yams, and other
food over the fire with the pepper branches. For rain they take
plants which have much juice in them, and leaves and stalks
of the via, the gigantic caladium, and crush them all together
with songs to give them mana ; then all is put into a basket,
and hidden in the hollow of a tree where water lies. To make
a. calm, leaves of a reed which is very light indeed, or pepper
stalks, are cut in lengths and hung up in a tree. All the
charms have their power because of Tagaro’s name in them.
Together with weather-charms may be classed those used
in the Banks’ Islands to assist a sow in her first litter of
pigs: such as beating her back with branches of a pepper
closely resembling that used for kava, strewing the blossoms of
the ivotarja, Barringtonia, upon her back, laying cocoa-nut
fronds on her, breaking a bamboo water-vessel over her back so
that the salt-water may run over her, hanging a bag full of
native almonds above her head ; all being done with the ap-
propriate form of words. Nets also used for the first time are
charmed with leaves and the song mana for the purpose. In
Lepers’ Island when a large new canoe is finished, and is for the
first time to be used, a very young cocoa-nut is made mana with
• a song which bids the canoe be swift, successful in trading, and
victorious in fighting, and it is then put on the outrigger.
Then they make a short trial of the new canoe, and afterwards
start with the conch trumpet and store of mats to trade for
pigs. It would be hard indeed to draw a limit to the use of
charms which, substantially the same in character with these,
assist those who know them or pay for them, or else injur or
obstruct their enemies. In prospect of a fight, for example,
besides his amulets and stones, a man in the Banks’ Islands
would strengthen his hand to shoot and kill by drinking an
infusion of very bitter herbs and bark ; and by chewing other
leaves and puffing forth their magic influence would dis-
hearten an approaching enemy.
(3) Witchcraft. The wizards who cure diseases are veryxn.]
203
Witchcraft. ‘Garata.’
often the same men who cause them, the mana derived from
spirits and ghosts being in both cases the agent employed ;
but it often happens that the darker secrets of the magic art
are possessed and practised only by those whose power lies in
doing harm, and who are resorted to when it is desired to
bring evil upon an enemy. Their secrets, like others con-
nected with mana, are passed down from one generation to
another, and may be bought. The most common working of
this malignant witchcraft is that, so common among savages,
in which a fragment of food, bit of hair or nail, or anything
closely connected with the person to be injured, is the medium
through which the power of the ghost or spirit is brought to
bear. Some relic such as a bone of the dead person whose
ghost is set to work is, if not necessary, very desirable for
bringing his power into the charm ; and a stone may have
its mana for doing mischief. What is needed is the bringing
together of the man who is to be injured and the spirit or
ghost who is to injure him ; this can be done when some-
thing which pertains to the man’s person can be used, such as
a hair, a nail, a leaf with which he has wiped the perspiration
from his face, and with equal effect when a fragment of the
food which has passed into the man forms the link of union.
Hence in Florida when a scrap from a man’s meal could be
secreted and thrown into the vunuha haunted by the tinclalo
ghost, the man would certainly be ill; and in the New
Hebrides when the mae snake carried away a fragment of
food into the place sacred to a spirit, the man who had eaten
of the food would sicken as the fragment decayed. It was
for this reason a constant care to prevent anything that
might be used in witchcraft from falling into the hands of
ill-wishers ; it was the regular practice to hide hair and nail-
parings, and to give the remains of food most carefully to the
pigs1. In the Banks’ Islands the fragment of food, or what-
1 There is little doubt that the common practice of retiring into the sea or a
river has its origin in the belief that water is a bar to the use of excrement in
charms. It is remarkable that at Mota, where clefts in rocks are used, no
doubt also for security, the word used is tas, which means sea.204	Magic.	[ch.
ever it may be, by which a man is charmed is called garata;
this was made up by the wizard with a bit of human bone,
and smeared with a magic decoction in which it would rot
away. Or the garata would be burnt, and while it was
burning the wizard sang his charm; as the garata was
consumed, the wizard burning it by degrees day after day,
the man from whom it came sickened, and would die, the
ghost of the man whose bone was burning would take away
his life. If then any man who knows he has an enemy has
reason himself to think that something has been taken from
him, or his friends hear that a garata from him is in some
wizard’s hands, he or they will give money to get the
fragment back ; and the enemy again and his friends will
give more to secure the continuance of the charm. In Aurora
the fragment of food is made up with certain leaves ; as these
rot and stink the man dies. In Lepers’ Island the garata is
boiled, together with certain magical substances, in a clam
shell with charms which call on Tagaro. It is evident that
no one who intends to bring mischief to a man by a fragment
of his food will partake of that food himself, because by doing
so he would bring the mischief also on himself. Hence a
native offering even a sing-le banana to a visitor will bite the
end of it before he gives it, and a European giving medicine
to a sick native gives confidence by taking a little first
himself1.
Another charm is common to both eastern and western
islands, which is called in the Banks’ Islands talamatai. A
bit of human bone, a fragment of coral, a splinter of wood, or
of an arrow by which a man has died, is bound up with the
leaves which have mana for the purpose, with the mana song;
by this means the power of the ghost is bound into the
charm, and the talamatai is secretly planted in the path along
1 1 He (Soga in Bugotu) was quite willing to try (quinine and brandy), so I
proceeded to mix it solemnly before them all. Then ensued a curious scene.
“ Taste it,” said Hugo. This I did, and he followed suit, and then all Soga’s
people had a little sip served out in a shell. This was to show there was no
harm in the medicine/—Bishop Selwyn.XII.]
1Ghost-shooter
205
which the person at whom the charm is aimed must pass, so
that the virtue of it may spring out and strike him with
disease. The tying and binding tight of the talamatai while
the charm is chanted is what gives the magic power, and if
the fibre to make the string is rolled in making it upon the
skull of a former practise!' of the art, its efficacy will be the
greater1. The talamatai was made but lately in Valuwa in
Saddle Island; but the wizard who tied the last brought
out all his magic apparatus before the people of his village
and smashed it with an axe. In Lepers’ Island the same
thing is called rango.
Another remarkable engine of mischief is called in the
Banks’ Islands tamatetiqa, ghost-shooter. Since this is used
also in Florida it may be supposed to be common to all these
islands. A bit of bamboo is stuffed with leaves, a dead man’s
bone, and other magical ingredients, the proper mana song-
being chanted over it. Fasting in the Banks’ Islands, but not
apparently in the Solomon Islands, adds power to this and
other charms. The man who has made or bought one of these
holds it in his hand, with the open end of the bamboo
covered with his thumb, till he sees his enemy; then he lets
out the magic influence and shoots his man. Some years ago
in Mota a man named Isvitag waiting with his ghost-shooter
in his hand for the man he meant to shoot, let fly too soon,
just as a woman with a child upon her hip stepped across the
path. It was his sister’s child, his nearest of kin, and he was
sure he had hit it full. To save it he put the contents of the
bamboo into water, to prevent inflammation of the invisible
wound, and the child took no hurt. A striking story was told
me by Edwin Sakalraw of Ara of what he saw himself. A
man in that islet was known to have prepared a tamatetiqa,
and had declared his intention of shooting his enemy with it
at an approaching feast; but he would not tell who it was
that he meant to kill, lest some friend of his should buy back
the power of the charm from the wizard who had prepared it.
1 According to the Mota expression they bind, we vil, a talamatai, and pour,
we wurot over a gar at a.206
[CH.
Magic.
To add force to the ghostly discharge he fasted so many days
before the feast began that when the day arrived he was too
weak to walk. When the people had assembled, he had
himself carried out and set down at the edge of the open
space where the dancing would go on. All the men there
knew that there was one of them he meant to shoot; no one
knew whether it was himself. There he sat as the dancers
rapidly passed him circling round, a fearful object, black with
dirt and wasted to a skeleton with fasting, his tamateticja
within his closed fingers stopped with his thumb, his trembling
arm stretched out, and his bleared eyes watching for his enemy.
Every man trembled inwardly as he danced by him, and the
attention of the whole crowd was fixed on him. After a while,
bewildered and dazed with his own weakness, the rapid move-
ments of the dancers, and the noise, he mistook his man ; he
raised his arm and lifted his thumb. The man he aimed at.
fell at once upon the ground, and the dancers stopped. Then
he saw that he had failed, and that the w'rong man was hit,
and his distress was great; but the man who had fallen and
w’as ready to expire, when he w7as made to understand that no
harm was meant him, took courage again to live, and presently
revived. No doubt he would have died if the mistake had
not. been known.
There is a strange method of magical attack used at Savo,
and knowm at Florida, called vele, a word which means to
pinch. The man who has the secret of this takes in a bag
upon his back the leaves and other things in wdrich mana for
this purpose resides, and seeks to find the man alone he goes
to injure. "When he finds him, he seizes him, bites his neck,
stuffs the magic leaves down his throat, and knocks him on
the head with an axe, but not so as to kill him. He then
leaves the man, wrho goes home, relates what has happened, and
dies after two days. If the attack is made in the night, the man
cannot tell who his assailant was; but the vele is used also in
broad daylight, and the assailant does not conceal himself, but
tells his name and bids his victim make it known. As he woes
O
home the charm makes him forget it. A strong man will notXII.]
Metamorphosis. Dreams.
207
be attacked in this way. The same thing is done in Guadal-
canal-, and the people of Saa at the extremity of Malanta hear
of it at Marau Sound by the name of hele. At Lepers’ Island,
in the New Hebrides, the vequa very much resembles this.
The wizard overcomes his victim with his charms, so that the
man cannot distinctly see him or defend himself; then he
shoots him with a little bow and arrow made of some charmed
material, and strikes him with the arrow. The man does not
know what is done to him, but he goes home, falls ill, and
dies; he can remember nothing to tell his friends, but they
see the wound in his head where he was struck, and in his
side where he was shot, and know what has happened
to him.
The practice of magic arts for mischief is in the Banks’
Islands and in Lepers’ Island called gaqaleva, and is always
dreaded in case of sickness. In Lepers’ Island the wizards
who practise it are believed to have the power of changing
their shape. The friends of any one suffering from sickness
are always afraid lest the wizard who has caused the disease
should come in some form, as of a blow-fly, and strike the
patient; they sit with him therefore and use counter-charms
to guard him, and drive carefully away all flies, lest his enemy
should come in that form. Some men by gaqaleva can turn
into a shark and eat an enemy, or more commonly some one
whom his enemy has hired the wizard to destroy. The story of
Tarkeke shews this belief in Aurora also, where, as in Lepers’
Island and in Pentecost, magicians turn into eagles and owls
as well as sharks. This power is not always used for malicious
ends, as was shewn by Molitavile at Lepers’ Island. A vessel
1 recruiting labour/ called by the natives a ‘ thief-ship,’ had
carried away some people from the island, and their friends
were very anxious to know what had become of them. Moli-
tavile, who had the power of changing his form, undertook
to turn himself into an eagle and fly after the vessel. He
told all the people of the village in the first place to keep
away from that side of the open space between the houses
from whence he would take his flight. Then he entered2o8	Magic.	[ch.
into a house decorated with cocoa-nut fronds, and they
saw no more ; but they knew that he drank the kava he
had prepared, and then lay down till his soul went out
of him in the form of a bird and followed the ship. After
a while he emerged from the house, and told the people
that all who had been carried away were well but one,
who was dead. Long afterwards, when some of those who
were then on board returned, they said that he had brought
back the truth, one of them by that time had died.
(4) Dreams. The native belief as to the nature of dreams,
and as to the part played by the soul of men in dreams,
is a subject of enquiry which belongs rather to the general
question as to the conceptions the people have of the nature of
the soul itself and of human life ; but the use of dreaming as
a branch of the practice of magic comes appropriately into
view in this place. In Maewo, Aurora, in the New Hebrides,
the dreaming-man, tatua qoreqore, who may be also in other
ways a gismana in his use of supernatural power, is in request
in cases of sickness. In an ordinary case, when it is supposed
that a ghost is the cause of the complaint, the friends of the
sick man send for the professional dreamer and give him now
tobacco, as formerly they gave mats, to find out what ghost
has been offended, and to make it up with him. He sleeps,
and in his dream goes to the place where the sick man has
been working ; there he meets some one, like an old man it is
likely, of small size, who really is a ghost, and he learns from
him what is his name. The ghost tells him that the sick man
as he was working has encroached upon his ground, the place
he haunts as his own, and that to punish him he has taken
away his soul and impounded it in a magic fence in the garden.
The dreamer begs for the return of the soul, and asks pardon
on behalf of the sick man, who meant no disrespect; the ghost
pulls up the fence in which the soul is enclosed, and lets it out;
the man of course recovers. These dreamers are able also to
visit Malanga, an abode of the dead. Sometimes if a child is
sick it is supposed that there is some one in Malanga drawing
away its soul. The conjecture is that the soul of the infant isXII.]
209
Prophecy.
in fact that of some one who has died and gone to Malanga,
but has afterwards desired to come hack to earth, and has been
born as the infant that now is sick ; and, moreover, that the
mother in Malanga, not wishing to lose the society of her
child there, is drawing back the re-born inlant’s soul. The
dreamer having received his fee goes in a dream to Malanga,
and intercedes with the mother there ; he gets back the soul,
and the child recovers. In Saa also in the Solomon Islands,
if a child starts in its sleep it is believed that some ghost is
snatching away what must be called in translation its shadow.
A wizard doctor undertakes to go in sleep and bring it back;
he dreams and goes ; if those who have taken the ‘ shadow ’ let
him take it back the child recovers, but if the child dies the
dreamer reports that they would not let him come near them.
In the same place when a thing is lost a wizard is engaged to
find it in a dream. In Lepers’ Island in case of theft or of any
hidden crime some wizard who understands how to do it drinks
kava, and so throws himself into a magic sleep. When he
wakes he declares that he has seen the culprit and gives his
name.
(5) Prophecy. The knowledge of future events is believed
to be conveyed to the people by a spirit or a ghost speaking
with the voice of a man, one of the wizards, who is himself
unconscious while he speaks. In Florida the men of a village
would be sitting in their Inala, canoe-house, and discussing
some undertaking, an expedition probably to attack some
unsuspecting village. One among them, known to have his
own tinclalo ghost of prophecy, would sneeze and begin to
shake, a sign that the tinclalo had entered into him; his eyes
would glare, his limbs twist, his whole body be convulsed,
foam would burst from his lips ; then a voice, not his own,
would be heard in his throat, allowing or disapproving of what
was proposed. Such a man used no means of bringing on the
ghost; it came upon him, as he believed himself, at its own will,
its mana overpowered him, and when it departed it left him
quite exhausted. Still a man to whom this happened, when
he had a reputation as a prophet, would be employed to assist
p2 10
[CH.
Magic.
in the council and make that a branch of his profession as a
wizard. The description of prophecy given in San Cristoval
is identical with the foregoing. In Saa, men who are possessed
with a lid a prophesy of things to come. In Lepers’ Island
it is believed that the spirit Tagaro puts his power as a spirit
into a man, manag, so that he speaks what otherwise he could
not, in the way of foretelling things to come, as well as of
making known what is concealed. These prophets are con-
sulted when a new gamali, the house of the Suqe Society,
is to be built, to know if there will he peace or war; because
a number of people assemble for such a purpose, and if there is
danger of fighting they will not leave their homes.
(6) Divination. There are many methods by which ghosts
and spirits are believed to make known to men who use them
the secret things which the unassisted human intelligence
could not find out; and some of these hardly need perhaps the
intervention of a wizard. These methods of divination differ
very little in the various islands. In the Solomon Islands,
in Florida for instance, when an expedition has started in a
fleet of canoes, there is sometimes a hesitation whether they
shall proceed, or a question in what direction they shall go.
A mane kirn divines; he declares that he has felt a tindalo
come on board, for one side of the canoe has been pressed down;
he asks therefore the question, ‘Shall we go? shall we go
there? ’ If the canoe rocks the answer is in the affirmative, if
it lies steady it is negative. When a man is sick and it is
desired to know what tindalo is eating him, the mane ki-su who
knows how to divine by paludulca is sent for. He comes,
bringing some one with him to assist, and the two sit down,
the wizard in front, the assistant at his back, and they hold a
stick or bamboo by the two ends. The wizard begins to slap
with one hand the end of the bamboo he holds, calling one
after another the names of men not very long deceased ; when
he names the one who is afflicting the sick man the stick of
itself becomes violently agitated. Another method of divina-
tion is called gogondo. The operator w ho knows this art takes
leaves of the dracsena equal in number to the tindalo ghosts heXII.]
Divination.
211
knows, and with them other leaves, vines of creepers, and bark
belonging to each tinclalo, in which the maria of each resides.
With these he goes to the place sacred to his gogondo, and the
people interested assemble. Then he ties the leaves to his
own body, and begins to split each dracaena leaf down the
middle. Each leaf answers to a tindalo, and if a leaf splits
crooked it is the tindalo answering to it that is eating the
sick man. The same gogondo is used to see whether a sick
man will live or die ; if the leaf representing the patient
splits clean he will recover, if crooked he will die. In Motlav
and the other Banks’ Islands they divined by means of a bam-
boo into which a ghost had entered, and which pointed of
itself to the thief or other culprit to be discovered. A common
method of divination in the Banks’ Islands is called so ilo, and
is used to enquire where a lost person or thing is to be found,
who is the thief, whether an absent friend is alive or dead.
The hands are lifted over the head and rubbed together with
a mag’ic song calling on a g'host. The sign is given by the
cracking of the joints; wdien the question is of life or death,
if the thumbs or shoulders crack the man still lives, if the
elbows crack he is dead. So if a man sneezes he will so ilo to
know who it is that curses him ; he revolves his fists one over
the other and then throws out his arms ; the revolving is the
question, and the answer is given as he asks, ‘ Is it So-and-
So ? ’ and his elbows crack. Another method of divination was
occasionally in use at Motlav in the same group. After a
burial they would take a bag and put make, Tahitian chestnut,
and scraped banana into it. Then a new bamboo some ten feet
long was fitted to the bag and tied with one end in the mouth
of it, and the bag was laid upon the grave, the men engaged
in the affair holding the bamboo in their hands. The names
of the recently dead were then called, and the men holding
the bamboo felt the bag become heavy with the entrance of
the ghost, which then went up from the bag into the hollow of
the bamboo. The bamboo and its contents being- carried into
the village, the names of dead men were called over to find out
whose ghost it was: when wrong names were called the free
p 22 I 2
Magic.	[ch.
end of the bamboo moved from side to side while the other
was held tight, at the right name the end moved briskly
round and round. Then questions were put to the enclosed
ghost, ‘ Who stole such a thing ? Who was guilty in such a
case ? ’ The bamboo pointed of itself at the culprit if present,
or made signs as before when names were called. This bam-
boo they say would run about with a man who had it lying
only on the palms of his hands ; but, it is remarked by my
native informant, though it moved in men’s hands it never
moved when no one touched it.
(7) Ordeals. To clear or to convict a man accused of guilt
there are ordeals managed by men with whom the magic in-
struments, and the knowledge of the charms by which they
can be used, remain. There are several ordeals used at Saa
which may stand as examples from the Solomon Islands. One
is called the dan hen, stone working, the knowledge of the
use of which is passed down from man to man with the magic
stone which is employed. An accused person goes to the man
who has the stone and engages him to undergo the ordeal.
The people assemble and the accused denies the charge, and
he submits to the ordeal through his compurgator. The
latter heats the stone and throws it from hand to hand ; if
his hands are not burnt the accused is pronounced innocent,
and pays a porpoise-tooth fee. There is much preparation
with a very young cocoa-nut, the flower of sug-ar-eane and
chanted charms to make the proceeding sa/ca, hot, with super-
natural power. It is probable that sometimes the accusers
make their preparations also with a bribe. Another consists
in the application of a lighted bundle of cocoa-nut fronds to
the legs of the accused, who stands up for it or is tied between
two posts. This is done with charms by the man who manages
it, and also gets his fee. In another the accused swallows a
charmed stone heated by the wizard employed, and is innocent
if he takes no harm. In a fourth the accused eats a bit of a
cocoa-nut which has been made very saka for the purpose,
and broken in pieces ; if he is guilty lug falls afterwards from
a tree or some other accident befalls him, or he pines away.xn.]
Ordeals. Poison.
213
Another method is to take almonds from a sacred place and
mash them with a charm ; the accused eats and is judged
guilty if he is the worse for it. There is again a very ancient
spear at Saa, very saka, full of magic power, called usu, dog,
because it has dogs’ teeth upon it. This is placed on the
head of the accused and he sajrs, 1 If I did the thing, may I
die with this spear ; ’ if he is guilty he sickens and dies with
the power of the spear. There is also a very sacred song,
very saka. The wizard who knows it sings it, and t the ac-
cused man says, 1 Well, that song is for me ; if I did that let
me and my children suffer.’ Finally, there is the alligator
ordeal, used in the passage between Mala Paina and Mala
Masiki, where the reptiles are very numerous. A man ac-
cused of serious crime is taken there ; the wizard who manages
the ordeal calls the alligators with his charms, and the accused
who is confident in his innocence and in the wizard’s power
dares to swim across. No one will hold him guilty if ho
escapes. In this ordeal also it is sometimes not the accused,
hut the man who knows the charm who submits himself to
the test. In Lepers’ Island a man to prove his innocence
will submit to be shot at with arrows ; if he be hit he is of
course guilty ; if he be innocent, Tagaro will protect him, just
as he protects in fighting any young man whom he preserves
that he may be prosperous and great. The favour of Tagaro
in either case is sought for with the appropriate charm.
(8) Poison. To the best of my knowledge the Melanesian
people were not acquainted with the use of any substance
which, when taken wdtk food or drink, would be injurious by
its natural properties, until they learnt the use of arsenic from
Queensland. Returned ‘ labourers ’ brought that back with
them, and used it with fatal effect in the same way in which
native poisoners used their own magical preparations, by
mixing it in food; and it is more than probable that the
certain and fatal effect was believed then to be due to the
powerful magical and not natural powers with which it was
endued. At any rate, if what native magicians employed in
poisoning food had any naturally noxious qualities (which is214
Magic.	[ch.
not denied), it was not any naturally noxious property which
was expected to produce the injurious result; nor when
mischief followed was it ascribed to the natural quality of
what had been administered ; the magic charms had in native
belief the power of poisoning, and communicated it to the
preparation which was mixed with the food. No doubt the
materials over which the poison charm was sung were such as
seemed to have a certain congruity with the effect to be
produced. The secrets of poison-making have not become
known; but in Florida it is believed by the people that the
liver of a black snake dried in the sun or over a fire was the
chief ingredient in the poisons which were used there. There
were certain persons who knew the art, and were hired to
poison with maomao, made with the mana power of the tinclalo
ghost belonging to the sorcerer employed, and mixed in the
food of the man whose life was aimed at. The Savo people
were great poisoners; Florida men who visited them were
careful what they ate. The effect of the poison was that one
who had taken it fell sick, vomited, and afterwards died.
The practice of this art was dangerous to the poisoner ; a
known poisoner was put to death in Florida, and so were
many innocent persons suspected or accused. In the Banks’
Islands to poison was to vangan pal, to feed by stealth. The
Ureparapara people in that group had the repute of being
poisoners, others would get poison from thence; in Mota no
one knew the art. In Lepers’ Island poison is called, by a
parallel expression, aruwana ; all that I have learnt of it is
that the preparation of it is very secret, and that it is made
with charms in the same way with the garata above described.
In fact the correspondence between the native poison and the
charm that works destruction through a fragment of food is
complete : in the one case a portion of the food already eaten
by the person to be injured is mixed with certain magically
powerful substances; in the other the magically powerful
substances are mixed in the food to be eaten. In either case,
according to the native belief, the mischief was caused by
magic. A man eating away from his closest friends was inXII.]
Taboo.
215
equal fear lest lie should be charmed through a fragment of his
food or poisoned by what might he put into his food. The
poisoned arrows, of which move hereafter, have never been
found to have been prepared with anything which could be pro-
perly said to be poison ; and undoubtedly the dreaded power of
such arrows to give fatal wounds was by the natives believed
to be due to the magic charms with which they were made,
and to the dead man’s bone with which they were pointed.
(9) Tapu and Curses. The word taboo is one of the very
few that the languages of the Pacific Ocean have given to the
English language; and something of its meaning therefore
may be supposed to be understood. But the tapu or tambu of
Melanesia is not so conspicuous in native life as the tapu of
Polynesia ; and it differs also perhaps in this, that it never
signifies any inherent holiness or awfulness, but always a
sacred and unapproachable character which is imposed. This
is not strictly accurate as regards the word in the Solomon
Islands, where everything connected with a ghost of worship,
tindalo, lio’a, or ’arlaro, is tambu of itself; it is accurate as con-
cerns the Banks’ Islands and New Hebrides, where what is
inherently sacred is rongo or sapuga. But still in cases where
the English word taboo can he employed there is always in
Melanesia human sanction and prohibition. Some thing,
action, or place is made tambu or tapu by one who has the
power to do it, any one whose standing among the people
gives him confidence to lay this character upon it. The
power at the back of the tapu or tambu is that of the ghost or
spirit in whose name, or in reliance upon whom, it is pro-
nounced ; for the tapu is a prohibition with a curse expressed
or implied. Thus in Florida a chief will forbid something to
be done or touched under a penalty; he has said, for example,
tambu hangalatu, any one who violates his prohibition must
pay him a hundred strings of money; it seems to the Euro-
pean a proof of the power of the chief; but to the native the
power of the chief, in this and in everything else, rests on the
persuasion that the chief has his tindalo at his back. The
sense of this in the particular case is remote, the apprehension[CH.
216	Magic.
of angering- the chief is present and effective, but the ultimate
sanction is the power of the tindalo. If a common man
were to take upon himself to tambu anything he might,
people would think that he would not do it unless he knew
that he had the power to do it; they would watch, and if any
one who violated his tambu were to fall sick, he would he
recognized at once as one who had a powerful tindalo, and he
would rise. Each tindalo has his special leaf, and a man will
set his tambu with the leaf of his tindalo as a mark ; men do
not always know whose leaf it is, but they know that they
have to deal with a tindalo, not only with a man, if they dis-
regard the mark. The tambu is too convenient an institution
to drop when the original sanction of it has ceased to operate;
a native Christian teacher therefore does not hesitate, as a
man of position in society, to set a tambu ; thieves he says are
afraid of a man if not of a tindalo. In the Banks’ Islands
there is a minor prohibition, soloi, as well as the more solemn
tajm, in which probably there is no direct reference to a super-
natural sanction. But a man by virtue of the supernatural
mana which accrues to him through his association with a
spirit will va-tapu, separate from common use, a path, trees,
part of the sea-beach, a canoe, a fishing-net, and no one would
be surprised if sickness fell at once upon any one who should
break the tapu. A person of no particular distinction would
set his soloi before the trees or garden, the fruit and produce
of which he wished to reserve for some feast, and intruders
would know at any rate that he carried his bow and arrows.
Stronger than any individual sanction was that of the secret
societies called Tamale; each had its leaf, and any member of
one could set the leaf of his society as a mark, to disregard
which would stir the anger of all the members. The payment
of a pig or money would appease the individual or society
whose prohibition had been despised.
It is evident that a tambu approaches to a curse, when it is
a prohibition resting on the invocation of an unseen power.
Thus at Saa, a few years ago, the chief forbade the young
people of the place to go to school, with a curse by the nameXII.]
Curses.
217
of a lid a, a ghost of power. In such a case if native ideas
only had prevailed, money, pigs, or valuable gifts would have
been sufficient to toto, make it up with, the chief, and he
would have been willing to toto ’akalo (page 137), set the
matter right by a sacrifice to the lida; but in this case the
Christian teachers, though really in some danger of their lives,
refused to acknowledge the power of the lid.a and of the curse,
and would give nothing to the chief, who thereupon professed
himself quite unable to remove the curse.
A curse by way of asseveration is very common in Florida,
and no doubt in the other Solomon Islands. A man will deny
an accusation by his forbidden food, butonggu! by some lindalo,
Daula, the ghostly frigate-bird, or Bagea, the ghostly shark.
The Florida people, and their neighbours probably, were
sufficiently advanced to garnish their conversation with profane
and filthy swearing, even before ‘contact with civilization ’ put
into their mouths those words which are too often the first
they learn of English. I am not aware of the existence of this
habit in the Banks’ Islands. The more serious curse there is
to vagona, to make into a tangle, to prohibit easy access
or procedure, under the sanction of a spirit’s power ; to swear
therefore by the name of some ghost or spirit is to vava vago-
gonag, that is, to speak making a supernatural power to
intervene, the withdrawal of which can only be effected by a
sufficient offering to appease the kyer of the curse, who will
proceed to satisfy the being invoked. To curse in the sense
of expressing a wish for mischief, with a mental if not a verbal
reference to a supernatural power, is to vivnag. Such may be
called the formula used in pouring water into the native oven
(page 147), and such a curse is supposed to be the cause of
sneezing. The milder forms are those whereby a troublesome
or impertinent request or remark is met ; ‘ Iniko 0 suri tamale,
you are a dead man’s bone ’; and by what they call sending otf,
varowog, to certain trees which have something of a sacred
character, vaioo ?nele! on a cycas, vaioo aru! on a casuarina,
vawo poga ! forms which mean not much more than 1 you be
hanged!’CHAPTER XIIT.
POSSESSION. INTERCOURSE WITH GHOSTS.
It is difficult to separate the practice of magic arts from the
manifestation of a ghost’s or spirit’s power in possession; because
a man may use some magic means to bring the possession upon
himself, as in the case of prophecy, and also because the
connexion between the unseen powerful being and the man,
in whatever way the connexion is made and works, is that
which makes the wizard. Yet there is a distinction between
the witchcraft and sorcery in which by magic charms the wizard
brings the unseen ptower into action, and the spontaneous mani-
festation of such power by the unseen being ; even though
there may be only a few who can interpret, or to whom the
manifestations are made. In a case of madness the native
belief is that the madman is possessed. There is at the same
time a clear distinction drawn by the natives between the
acts and words of the delirium of sickness in which as they say
they wander, and those which are owing to possession. They
are sorry for lunatics and are kind to them, though their
remedies are rough. At Florida, for example, one Kandngaru
of Boli went out of his mind, chased people, stole things and
hid them. No one blamed him, because they knew that he was
possessed by a iinclalo ghost. His friends hired a wizard who
removed the tindalo, and he recovered. In the same way not
long ago in Lepers’ Island there was a man who lost his senses.
The people conjectured that he had unwittingly trodden on a
sacred place belonging to Tagaro, and that the ghost of the
man who lately sacrificed there was angry with him. ThePossession by Ghosts.	219
doctors were called in; they found out whose ghost it was by
calling on the names of dead men likely to have been offended,
they washed him with water made powerful with charms, and
they burned the vessel in which the magic water had been
under his nose ; he got well. In a similar case they will put
bits of the fringe of a mat, which has belonged to the deceased,
into a cocoa-nut shell, and burn it under the nose of the
possessed. There was another man who threw off his malo and
went naked at a feast, a sure sign of being out of his mind; he
drew his bow at people, and carried things off. The people
pitied him, and tried to cure him. When a man in such
condition in that island spoke, it was not with his own voice,
but with that of the dead man who possessed him ; and such
a man would know where things w7ere hidden ; when he was
seen coming men would hide a bow or a club to try him, and
he would alwTays know7 where to find it. Thus the possession
w7hich causes madness cannot be quite distinguished from that
which prophesies, and a man may pretend to be mad that he
may get the reputation of being a prophet. At Saa a man
w7ill speak with the voice of a powerful man deceased, with
contortions of the body which come upon him when he is
possessed; he calls himself, and is spoken to by others, by
the name of the dead man wdio speaks through him ; he will
eat fire, lift enormous weights, and foretell things to come.
In the Banks’ Islands the people make a distinction between
possession by a ghost that enters a man for some particular
purpose, and that by a ghost wrhich comes for no other
ajrparent cause than that being without a home in the abode
of the dead he wanders mischievously about, a funiat lelera, a
wandering ghost. "Wonderful feats of strength and agility
used to be performed under the influence of one of these
‘ wandering ghosts ’; a man would move w'ith supernatural
quickness from place to place, he would be heard shouting at
one moment in a lofty tree on one side of a village, and in
another moment in a tree on the opposite side, he would utter
sounds such as no sane man could make, his strength w7as such
that many men could hardly master him. Such a man was220 Possession. Intercourse with Ghosts. [ch.
seized by his friends and held straggling in the smoke of
strong smelling leaves, while they called one after another the
names of the dead men whose ghosts were likely to be abroad;
when the right name was called the ghost departed, but
sometimes this treatment failed. It was a different thing
when, as used to happen in former days, a ghost from Panoi,
the abode of the dead, would come for a certain purpose into a
man and speak with his voice. This did not happen to all
men alike, but to some who were subject to this possession.
Such a man would somewhere see a ghost, come home and lie
down sick. People would come to see him, and calling him by
his name would ask what was the matter. He would answer,
‘ It is not he, it is I,’ that is, not the sick man, but the ghost
who answers by his voice. Then they would call over the
names of the lately deceased to see whose ghost it was, and
when they hit on the right name he would answer, ‘ It is I.’
Then he would begin to weep, and tell them that he had come
back because he knew in Panoi that his wife and family were
not duly cared for, or that his property was being wasted,
lie would scold his relatives for their misconduct, and he would
tell them of things they did not know, such as where lost
property would be found. Some one would then bring in a
bunch of strong-smelling leaves to drive him away, and he
would immediately perceive its presence ; they would hide it
and deny in vain that they had brought it in. They caught
hold of him struggling and howling, and put the leaves to his
nose ; he seemed to die, the ghost departed from him as the
soul departs from a dying man. After a while his senses
would return, and he would declare that he knew nothing of
what had been said or done since he saw that ghost and
sickened. Such a medium as this, though not a wizard by
profession, no doubt found it worth his while to receive these
ghostly visits.
An Omen is a spontaneous manifestation or warning given
by supernatural power, and not obtained by the arts of
divination. The sign given to a Florida party, when they
start upon their voyage and wait for the rocking of theirxiii.]	Omens. Vampires.	221
canoe, might be such if the sign were not given in answer to
the wizard on hoard. True omens are observed at Saa. There
is a small bird named wisi from its cry, which means 1 No.’
It has other notes which resemble the voice of a man talking.
If men starting on an expedition hear the cry wisi ! it is not
enough to turn them back perhaps, but if they fail they
remember the warning ; if they hear the other notes they are
confident of success. A man working in his garden hears the
bird, and he asks, ‘ Is there fighting ? ’ The bird answers
wisi, No. He asks again, ‘ Is it a stranger come from far ? ’
The bird answers wisi, or chatters to give an affirmative reply.
This is, however, not seriously thought of. If a frog, or some
other creature that does not usually come indoors, is seen in a
house it is an omen. They will go and enquire of a wizard
what it means. If the creature comes and cries they know
that soon there will be crying for a death. There is in that
island a remarkable kind of snake rarely seen, called malt e
sato ; it is about ten inches long, glistening like gold, and
when full grown, the natives say, so resplendent that nothing
of it can be clearly seen but its eyes and snout; when it is
taken into the hand it is exceedingly smooth and slippery.
If one of these is seen in a house it is a sign of death ; if
running, of violent death ; if quiet, of death by sickness. If
the venomous snake au is seen in a house it is a sign of death
or fighting or misfortune; if coiled up it is a sign of quiet
death ; if running, there will be violence. When a beginning
is made of building a house or canoe, or of clearing a garden,
a man will call aloud, and then if something remarkable
appears it is a sign that the work will be interrupted by
death or war; if nothing comes, all will be well. The sacred
character of the sigo, kingfisher, in the Banks’ Islands has been
mentioned, and that its cry is ominous. It is the same in
Lepers’ Island, where, if a party is going to battle and a king-
fisher, higo, cries to the right, it foretells victory; if it cries to
the left, it bodes failure.
There is a belief in the Banks’ Islands in the existence of a
power like that of Vampires. A man or woman would obtain222 Possession. Intercourse with Ghosts. [ch.
this power out of a morbid desire for communion with some
ghost, and to gain it would steal and eat a morsel of a corpse.
The ghost then of the dead man would join in a close friend-
ship with the person who had eaten, and would gratify him by
afflicting any one against whom his ghostly power might be
directed. The man so afflicted would feel that something was
influencing his life, and would come to dread some particular
person among his neighbours, who was therefore suspected of
being a talamaur. This latter when seized and tried in the
smoke of strong'-smelling leaves would call out the name of
the dead man whose ghost was his familiar, often the names
of more than one, and lastly the name of the man who was
afflicted. The same name talamaur was given to one whose
soul was supposed to go out and eat the soul or lingering life
of a freshly-dead corpse. There was a woman some years ago
of whom the story is told that she made no secret of doing
this, and that once on the death of a neighbour she gave
notice that she should go in the night and eat the corpse.
The friends of the deceased therefore kept watch in the house
where the corpse lay, and at dead of night heard a scratching-
at the door, followed by a rustling noise close by the corpse. One
of them threw a stone and seemed to hit the unseen thing ;
and in the morning the talamaur was found with a bruise on
her arm which she confessed was caused by a stone thrown at her
while she was eating the corpse. Such a woman would feel
a morbid delight in the dread which she inspired, and would
also be secretly rewarded by some whose secret spite she
gratified.
A certain mysterious power was believed to attach to some
men in the Banks’ Islands, which the natives find it difficult
to explain. There is something belonging to a man called
his wuqa or uqa. If a stranger sleeps in some one’s habitual
sleeping-place in his absence and afterwards finds himself un-
well, he knows that the uqa of the man in whose place he
slept has struck him there; or if one leaves an associate and
goes elsewhere to sleep, the uqa of the man he leaves will follow
him and strike him ; he will rise in the morning weak andXIII.]
Tricks of Ghosts.	223
languid, or if he had been unwell before he would be worse.
Although this is not done by witchcraft a man is held re-
sponsible for what his uqa does, and is made to pay money to
the injured man, and by an act of his will to take off the
malignant influence.
Here may be mentioned also certain tricks which ghosts or
spirits play on men, or which men know how to make them
play. At Mota in the Banks’ Islands a little boy named
Peitavunana, heavenly water, was frightened and chased by a
ghost up the mountain. He was sought for in vain, and a
fight was threatened. They divined for him, so 'do, by crack-
ing of the fingers (page 211), and a man from Vanua Lava
announced that he would be found in a certain very inaccessible
place. There he was found by Somwaswns at the root of a
tree crying and calling on his mother, his bodjr covered with
excrement, the food of ghosts, and streaming with blood from
the thorns through which he had been forced, and in his
hand an unripe fruit of the mammy-apple. He said that his
dead mother had come to him and given him the food.
Another little boy, Nungwia, sleeping on the beach at night,
was conveyed by a ghost into a very small cavity beneath a
rock, into which it was impossible for him to have climbed.
In Lepers’ Island they have a way of playing with a ghost.
They build a little house in the forest near their village and
adorn it 'with leaves and cocoa-nut fronds. It has a partition
dividing it in two, and a bamboo twelve or fifteen feet long
is put within, half on one side of the partition, half on the
other. The men assemble in the night to try the presence of
a ghost, and sit in the house on one side only of the partition
with their hands under one end of the bamboo. They shut
their eyes, and call the names of the lately dead. When they
feel the bamboo moving in their hands they know that the
ghost is present whose name was the last they called. Then
they ask, naming one of themselves, ‘ Where is Tanga? ’ and
the bamboo rises in their hands and strikes him, and then
sinks back. They are sure then of the presence of the ghost,
and tell him they will go outside ; and they go out, singing,224 Possession. Intercourse with Ghosts. [ch.
with one end of the bamboo in their hands. Then the bamboo
leads them as the ghost within it chooses. They make
known what they wish by singing, and the bamboo makes
them do the contrary to what they say they want; if they
sing that they will go up hill it drags them down. Finally,
they sing that they wish not to return into the path, and they
are led out of the bush into the path ; they sing that they do
not want to go into the village, and they are taken there.
In the same way a club is put at night into a cycas-tree,
which has a sacred character, and when the name of some
ghost is called it moves of itself and will lift and drag people
about. In Mota a few years ago they tried again a practice
of this kind loDg disused, with a success that caused alarm.
A basket was fastened to the end of a bamboo and food put
in it; a man took the bamboo upon his shoulder and walked
along, the basket at his hack ; presently he felt a heavy
weight in the basket as much as he could carry, a sign that a
ghost had come into it. The bamboo then would drag people
about, and prat up into a tree would lift them from the ground.
This resembles a good deal a method of divination used at
Motlav, and described above, but there is no divination in
these tricks.
There was, and perhaps still is, in the Torres Islands some-
thing similar to this, when ghosts influenced and took
possession of pieople with the use of sticks. This has been
described by a native under the name of Pa tamet lingalinga,
by which name those who are subjected to the ghostly influence
are called. It is done, he writes, on the fifth day after a death.
There was a certain man at Lo who took the lead, and without
whom nothing could be done ; he gave out that he would
descend into Panoi, the abode of the dead, and he had with
him certain others, assistants. He and his party were called
simply ‘ ghosts ’ when engaged in the affair. The first thing
was to assemble those who were willing to be treated in a
gavial, a public hall, perhaps twenty young men or boys, to
make them lie down on the two sides, and to shake over them
leaves and tips of the twigs of plants powerful and magicalAin.j j-u-rm oj possession in Torres Islands 225
with charms. Then the leader and his assistants went into all
the sacred places which ghosts haunt, such as where men
wash off the black of mourning, collecting as they went the
ghosts and becoming themselves so much possessed that they
appeared to have lost their senses, though they acted in a
certain method. In the meanwhile the subjects lying in the
gamal begin to be moved ; those who bring as they say the
ghosts to them go quietly along both sides of the house with-
out, and all at once strike the house along its whole length
with the sticks they carry in their hands. This startles those
inside, and they roll about on the ground distracted. Then
the ‘ghosts’ enter in with their sticks, and in this performance
each is believed to be some one deceased, one Tagilrow, another
Qatawala ; they leap from side to side, turning their sticks
over to be beaten by the subjects on one side and the other.
The subjects are given sticks for this purpose, and as they
strike the stick the ghost 1 strikes,’ possesses, them one after
another. In this state the sticks draw them out into the
open place of the village, where they are seen. They appear
not to recognize or hear any one but the ‘ghosts’ who have
brought this upon them, and who alone can control them and
prevent them from pulling down the houses ; for they have a
rage for seizing and striking with anything, bows, clubs,
bamboo water-vessels, or the rafters of the houses, and their
strength is such that a full-grown man cannot hold a boy in
this state. After a time the ‘ ghosts ’ take them back into
the gamal, and there they lie exhausted ; the ‘ ghosts ’ go to
drink lava, and as each drinks he pours away the dregs call-
ing the name of one of the possessed, and the senses of each
return as his name is called. It is five days, however, before
they can go about again. This was done once after a
Christian teacher had come to Lo, and two of his scholars
whom he let go to prove that it was a deception were
possessed.
People in the Banks’ Islands have certain tricks which
those who do not understand them believe to be the work of
ghosts. A man will hear a voice from the ground beneath
0.226 Possession. Intercourse with Cl hosts. [cm.
bis fV ft. f.ylliiitf hirn Lv his name. I hi- is said to be done by
lotting an open bamboo some foot or two into the "round in
some place not far from the person to be addressed, where the
operation will be unseen, and then speaking into the end of
the bamboo, and directing the voice in the way the sound is
meant to travel. Again, a family party working in their
garden will see smoke and sparks ascending in the direction
of their village; t.hev hear the hissing of the flames and the
popping of the bamboo rafters; they are sure that it is their
own house burning, and run to save what they can. "When
thev reach the village all is quiet, the houses are all standing
with fastened doors, as in the hours of work. The trick
has been played by a jart.y who somewhere in a line with
the house have made a fire, and exploding green reeds
which fill with steam when fnated in the fire, and beating
with the tip- of dry cocoa-nut fronds upon the ground,
have imitated with wonderful exactness the noises of a house
on fire.
It will hardly be inappropriate here to introduce the
Melanesian superstition about sneezing, to which some
reference ha- been already made. In Florida when a man
sneezes they think that some one i- speaking of him, is
angry with him, perhaps cursing him by calling on his own
tirulalo to eat him ; the man who sneezes calls upon his
iludalo to damage the man who is cursing him. In the
same way at Saa if a man sneezes when he wakes, he cries,
•' Who calls me ' If for good, well : if for evil, may So-and-So
("naming a two.) defend me.’ In the Hanks’ Islands also some
one i- supposed to be calling the name of a. man when he
sneezes, either for good or evil. In Motlav if a child sneezes,
the mother will cry, ' Je t. him come back into the world ! let
biro remain.’ Jn Alota they erv, ‘Live, roll back to us 1 ’
The notion i- that, a ghost, i- drawing the child’s soul away.
It, ha- been said that, at A Iota a man enquires when be
sneezes by a certain divination who is cursing him; he will
also stamp with his foot and cry, ‘Stamp down the mi-chief
from me ! Let it he quiet! Let them say their words in vain ;XIII]	Sneezing.	227
let them lay their plots in vain ! ’1. There is a special form of
words used when one’s step-father sneezes (page 40). The
native notions in the New Hebrides are much the same; but
in Lepers’ Island, if an infant sneezes, it is a sign that its soul
has been away, and has just come back; the friends present
cry out with good wishes. They judge in the same island by
the character of the sneeze what is the motive with which
the sneezer’s name is being called; if it be a gentle sneeze
no harm is meant, a violent, paroxysm is warning of a
curse.
1 Vara sur o lea nan nau,—ni masur—nira vetcet wora, nira sorsora icora/
Q 3CHAPTER XIV.
BIRTH. CHILDHOOD. MARRIAGE.
In attempting to trace the course of a Melanesian life
from firth to burial we soon meet with practices connected
with the Couvade. A proper Couvade has perhaps been
observed in San Cristoval alone, when the young father was
found lying in after the birth of his child ; and it should be
observed that this was where the child follows the father’s
kindred. There is much however which approaches this. At
Saa it is not only the expectant mother who is careful what
she eats, the lather also both before and after the child’s
birth refrains from some kinds of food which would hurt the
child. lie will not eat pig’s flesh, and he abstains from
movements which are believed to do harm, upon the principle
that the father’s movements affect those of the child. A
man will not do hard work, lift heavy weights, or go out to
sea ; he keeps cpriet lest the child should start, should over-
strain itself, or should throw itself about as he paddles. In
the Banks’ Islands also, both parents are careful what
thejr eat when the child is born, they take only what if taken
by the infant would not make it ill ; before the birth of her
first child the mother must not eat fish caught by the hook,
net, or trap. After the birth of the first child, the father
does no heavy work for a month ; after the birth of any of
his children, he takes care not to go into those sacred places,
tano roncjo, into which the child could not go without risk.
It is the same in the New Hebrides; the expectant Araga
father keeps away from sacred places, vie wpuga, before theCotivade. Infanticide.	229
child’s birth, and does not enter his house ; after the birth, he
does work in looking after his wife and child, but he must
not eat shell-fish and other produce of the beach, for the
infant would suffer from ulcers if he did. In Lepers’ Island,
the father is very careful for ten days; he does no work, will
not climb a tree, or g*o far into the sea to bathe, for if he
exerts himself the child will suffer. If during this time
he goes to any distance, as to the beach, he brings back with
him a little stone representing the infant’s soul, which may
have followed him ; arrived at home, he cries, ‘ Come hither,’
and puts down the stone in the house ; then he waits till the
child sneezes, and he cries, ‘ Here it is,’ knowing then that
the soul has not been lost.
Abortion and Infanticide were very common. If a woman
did not want the trouble of bringing up a child, desired to
appear young, was afraid her husband might think the birth
before its time, or wished to spite her husband, she would find
some one to procure abortion either by the juice of certain plants
taken in drink or by twisting and squeezing the fcetus. Infan-
ticide was more prevalent in some islands than others; since
Christian teaching has been introduced a great change is visible
in Maewo, Aurora Island, and at Wango in San Cristoval,
where the birth of an infant was of late years indeed an un-
usual thing, and all the children in the villages had been
bought from inland. In those parts the old women of the vil-
lage generally determined whether a newborn child should live;
if not promising in appearance, or likely to be troublesome, it
was made awajr with, its mouth perhaps stuffed with leaves and
the body cast into a hole and covered with a stone. In the
Banks’ Islands, if of the wrong sex or otherwise unwelcome, the
infant was choked as soon as born. Male children were killed
rather than female in that group ; if there were female children
already, another would not be desired; but the females were
rather preserved, as it is important to observe, because of the
family passing through the female side, as well as with the
prospect of gain when the girl should be betrothed and married.
There is nowhere in the groups generally the practice of230 Birth. Childhood. Marriage. [ch.
killing one of twins, nor is there anywhere any dislike to the
birth of twins further than from the trouble they entail. In
some places, as at Saa, twins are liked; at Motlav the people
of a village are proud of their twins, and the parents and
relations make much of them; no one would adopt one of
them, because it would spoil the pleasure of seeing them
together, and deprive them of their natural right to be
together; the only sad thing about them is that they give
much trouble, and that the parents will be so sorry if they die.
In Florida alone there seems to be something of a suspicion
that two lathers may be concerned ; but they take it that the
woman has trespassed on the sacred place, mtnuha, of some
ghost, tinclalo, whose power lies that way. In Lepers’ Island
also it is thought that twins may be a gift of Tagaro.
Women who want a child will go to a sacred place in hope
that the spirit will give them one, and sometimes he gives
them two. There is now in the island one Malavaiboe, Pig-
twin, the survivor of twin sons of Arusese; the people believe
he will turn out a great man, not so much because he is a
twin, as because Tagaro gave the twins of which he is one to
their mother when she went to ask a child.
At Saa, when a newborn infant is eig-ht or ten days old a
sacrifice, ’unu qo (page 137), is made to the family lid a to provide
against misfortune. In Lepers’ Island when the infant is ten
days old the mother is well again, and the father goes down
to the beach to wash the things belonging to the child. As
he goes he scatters along the path little toy bows, if it be a
boy, a sign that he shall be a strong bowman ; if it be a girl,
he throws down bits of the pandanus fibre out of which mats
are made, for the mats which count as money are to be her
work. In case the child dies after eating for the first time
the parents will not eat that food afterwards themselves. At
Araga, Pentecost Island, a first-born son remains ten days in
the house in which he was born, during which time the father’s
kinsmen take food to the mother. On the tenth day they
bring nothing, but the father gives them food and mats, which
count as money, in as great quantity as he can afford. They,XIV.]
231
Ceremonies in infancy. Dress.
the kin of the father and therefore not kin of the infant, on
that day perform a certain ceremony called Jtuluni\ they lay
upon the infant’s head mats and the strings with which pigs
are tied, and the father tells them that he accepts this as a
sign that hereafter they will feed and help his son. There is
clearly in this a movement towards the patriarchal system, a
recognition of the tie of blood through the father and of duties
that follow from it. Another sign of the same advance of the
father’s right is to he seen in the very different custom that
prevails in the Banks' Islands on the birth of a first-born son ;
there is raised upon that event, a noisy and playful fight, vctgalo,
after which the father buys off the assailants with payment of
money to the other reve, to the kinsmen that is of the child
and his mother. It is hardly possible to be mistaken in
taking this fight to be a ceremonial, if playful, assertion of the
claim of the mother’s kinsfolk to the child as one of themselves,
and the father’s payment to be the quieting of their claim and
the securing of his own position as head of his own family.
As children grow they remain in their tender years in the
women’s care within the house. They are commonly weaned
when they can crawl. Their first advance in life when they
are boys depends very much upon the custom of the place
concerning' clothing. In the Banks’ Islands, where males of
any age wore nothing, boys as they grew bigger were sent to
sleep in the gamal, the public club-house ; the parents said
‘ He is a boy, it is time to separate him from the girls.’
They took their meals at home until sooner or later they had
their place bought for them in the Suqe Club. In the
Torres Islands the nose is bored on the third day for the
future ornament. In Florida and its neighbourhood bo.ys of
six or seven put on the little wrapper worn by males, and are
very particular about it. At Santa Cruz the boys go at first
to the chiefs manclai, canoe-house and public hall, in the
daytime and go home to sleep; after a while they cease to
return at night. Before dress in that island comes the indis-
pensable nose-ring ; the hole for this is made in infancy and
a little ring inserted. When the ears are bored it is a great232	Birth. Childhood. Marriage. [ch.
occasion and a pig- is killed, and so always when an additional
hole is made, and a Santa Cruz boy may be seen with more
than thirty ear-rings. The Santa Cruz dress is ample, and is
assumed with a feast and killing of a pig. The boy’s as-
sumption of a dress depends therefore on the ability and
willingness of his friends to provide the feast, and some big
boys go naked. The dress in the New Hebrides, at Lepers’
Island, and Pentecost differs little from that of Santa Cruz.
The boy puts on his malo dress when his parents think him
big enough, and sooner or later as they can afford to make a
feast. Before this he has lived at home, but now he eats and
sleeps in the r/amali club-house, and now begins his strange
and strict reserve of intercourse with his sisters and his
mother. This begins in fidl force towards his sisters; he
must not use as a common noun the word which is the name
or makes part of the name of any of them, and they avoid
his name as carefully. He may go to his father’s house to ask
for food, but if his sister is within he has to go away
before he eats ; if no sister is there he can sit down near the
door and eat. If by chance brother and sister meet in the
path she runs away or hides. If a boy on the sands knows
that certain footsteps are his sister’s, he will not follow them,
nor will she his. This mutual avoidance begins when the
boy is clothed or the girl tattooed. The partition between
boys and girls without which a school cannot be carried on is
not there to divide the sexes generally, but to separate brothers
and sisters. This avoidance continues through life. The
reserve between son and mother increases as the boy grows
up, and is much more on her side than his. He goes to the
house and asks for food; his mother brings it out but does
not give it him, she puts it down for him to take ; if she calls
him to come she speaks to him in the plural, in a more
distant manner; 'Come ye,’ she says, mini vanai, not ‘Come
thou.’ If they talk together she sits at a little distance and
turns away, for she is shy of her grown-up son. The meaning
of all this is obvious. At Santa Cruz and the neighbouring
islands the separation of the sexes in daily life is carried far,XIV.]
Avoidance. Noviciate at Saa.
lint has not this character. At Santa Cruz the men and
women never work together promiscuously or assemble in
one group ; men with their wives and children only, and men
with their mothers, work in the gardens; when a crowd
assembles the women collect aloof. In Nufilole, one of the
Swallow group, the separation is complete ; men and women
are never out together; in the morning the men go out
first and come back, after that the women go and fetch water,
when they return the men go out again.
It has been said in Chapters Y and VI that there is not
known in these Islands of Melanesia any initiation or ‘ making
of young men ’ ; there is only the entrance into the various
societies. The nearest approach to such initiation seems to be
found at Saa. A chief’s son in that part of Malanta goes
early to the o/ia, canoe-house and public hall, while common
children still eat and sleep at home; he may go there when
he is twelve years old. Before that they are very careful
about him ; he must not go under the women’s bedplace, his
mother must never use bad words in scolding him, he must
not consort with big boys who will teach him bad ways ; he is
kept apart lest he lo it, fall, be low1. At first he goes only in
the daytime to the otia, and comes back to his mother to sleep.
When the time comes he is put with boys of his own ag-e to
undergo a sort of noviciate. The custom is dying out; boys
used to stay in the olia sometimes for years. First of all there
was a toto sacrifice (page 137) to purify the boys. Afterwards
they went out every morning early in a canoe to catch the
bonito-fish, till each boy had caught one. Men paddled with
the boys, a boy sitting behind a man; when the man had a
bite the boy behind him came forward and helped to haul it in ;
the fish counted as the boy’s, he had caught a fish which one
must be saka, be possessed of a certain mysterious power, to
1 It is curious that the word lota, commonly used for the profession of
Christianity in Polynesia and in Fiji, should occur in this sense in the Solomon
Islands. The meaning from which its use to describe the new religion came
was that of bowing down as in prayer. To go where women may be above his
head is degrading to a chief; hence the refusal to go below on board a vessel.234
Birth. Childhood. Marriage. [ch.
catch ; and he had reached a certain stage in life. A hoy did
not come out when he had caught his fish, he remained for
the time fixed for him at his entrance, according to his father’s
rank, or that in which his father had aspired to set him ; for
the length of his stay depended very much upon the expense
to which his father proposed to go. One might come out
before his time, as Wateaado did when his brother died and he
was wanted to take his place. At certain intervals during
this seclusion feasts were made, and a great one when a boy
came out. There was no secret initiation, nothing whatever
was taught the hoys, the only thing they learnt was how to
fish for bonito. They came out young men and strangers to
tb* people of the village, out of whose sight they had grown
up. This custom has now ceased at Saa.
Circumcision is unknown in almost all the islands which are
here in view; it has come up from Ambrym to the lower end
of Pentecost, as a prevailing custom, and not very lately. It
is done at any age, whenever the boy’s friends choose to make
the feast. It is not a mark of initiation and has no religious
or superstitious character; it is a social distinction. It is
known but not yet practised in Lepers’ Island, but is said to
have been already introduced into the southern part of Aurora.
A sharp bamboo is used. There is no doubt that the custom,
for it is not a rite, has come across from the eastwards to the
Southern New Hebrides, and has been for some time in common
use, the dress in some of those islands, if it may be so called,
being adapted to it.
The childhood of a girl can hardly be marked except by
her advance towards matrimony, to which her being clothed
and tattooed is in some places at least a necessary step. In
Florida and the neighbouring parts, in Santa Cruz, in Pente-
cost Island, and most of the New Hebrides, the women’s dress
is a petticoat of strings of fibre or of leaves. In the south-
eastern Solomon Islands and the Banks’ Islands the women
wear a band with tufts or fringes, to which in Lepers’ Island
there is added out of doors a mat which envelopes the person.
The moral character and training of the girls may well bexiv.]	Chastity. Harlots.	235
noticed before their betrothal and marriage are taken in hand.
Considerable laxity of intercourse between boys and girls
undoubtedly existed, and unchastity was not very seriously
regarded ; yet it is certain that in these islands generally
there was by no means that insensibility in regard to female
virtue with which the natives are so commonly charged.
There is but too good a cause generally for the natives to
present at once their unchaste females to white visitors, and
these then speak from experience little creditable to those of
their colour who have preceded them. There is a considerable
difference however to be observed between one island and
another in this matter, an example of which appears in the
presence or absence of a word signifying a harlot. In Florida
such a woman is called rembi, and occupied not long ago a
recognized place in native life; but it was in consequence
generally of misconduct, such as adultery or fornication within
the kema kin, that a woman was condemned by the chief of
her place to such a life. She belonged to the chief, lived in
one of his houses, and most of her earnings were his. When
she had accumulated porpoise teeth and money she would be
allowed to marry, being well worth having, and then reference
to her former career would not be proper. While rembi she
was not particularly despised ; no one would step over her legs,
go too near to her, or talk to her without cause. At Wango
in San Cristoval and in the neighbourhood girls were very
loose before marriage, getting money for themselves privately
by prostitution ; and besides, there are harlots, repi, there, some
girls not yet married, and some widows. They considered
themselves much stricter at Saa in Malanta; a girl of family
found jiregnant before marriage would be killed, unless the
paramour could pay enough to save her and make her his wife.
A girl of no family, that is, not of the chief s family, would
not be killed, but might be allowed to become a harlot if not
married by her lover. Sometimes a man allows his daughter
to become a harlot to gain money; and a chief at Ulawa will
buy a girl from her father and keep her to earn money for him
as well as for herself; but such a repi in either island is not236	Birth. Childhood. Marriage.	[ch.
respected, is thought a low character, and will have hut little
given for her if she is married. The good families in Ulawa
also are strict, and mothers look well after their girls. At
Santa Cruz, where the separation of the sexes is so carefully
maintained, there are certainly public courtesans. In the
Banks’ Islands there is no such thing known1 ; it was
always in old times the duty of parents to look well after
their children both boys and girls, and to scold and correct
them if they should see them going wrong; girls were never
allowed to go about alone without their mother or elder friend ;
however common irregular intercourse may have been it was
never allowed, never respectable, public feeling was on the side
of virtue. There were respectable families where the girls
were known or presumed to conduct themselves perfectly well,
to toga mantag, and a girl from such a family would as a rule
be chaste up to the time of her marriage. Bastards were very
rare in the Banks’ Islands2. A woman living without a
husband would indeed sometimes be seen with children; but
then it was known in the place that she had been taken to
wife by a man whose previous wife was jealous and had driven
her from the house. In the Northern New Hebrides, as
Pentecost and Lepers’ Island, harlots are unknown, though
there are unmarried girls and married women who are known
to receive mats and ornaments in prostitution secretly. There
is a story in Lepers’ Island of a man with two wives who when
he went from home hung a bag in his house which he
expected to be filled with mats by the time he came home.
In these islands also a reputation for chastity is valued for its
own sake, and in respectable families care is taken of the
girls. In every island it may be said that there are house-
holds in which it is understood that the family is generally
1	To translate the word harlot in Mota, it has been necessary to use the
phrase iavine vile vile som, a woman who gives money, with a singular inversion
of meaning. In fact the women of bad character are those married women
who give secretly money to youths by way of invitation. The youth gives
back food by way of pledge.
2	A bastard was called nat gaer/ae, a child of the thicket, and was said to be
wota vaiumccuj, born without belongings, as a desert place is vanua vanaineag.
Ixn-.]
Betrothal. Tattoo.
237
well conducted, and which are respectable accordingly, and
everywhere there are families which are not respectable.
Bastards are generally very rare.
Betrothal comes very early in the life of many Melanesian
girls ; a man with a son born to him looks out for the birth of
a suitable girl to be his son’s wife. This is especially the case
with persons of consequence and wealth, and upon this begins
the long series of payments and negotiations which come to
their end at the marriage. The general character of these
transactions may be understood from the ways in which
matrimoniafmffairs are managed in the various islands. The
first marriage of the young man may be taken to be in view ;
wives are added to the first with less to do about if, but not with-
out a good deal of bargaining on the part of the men concerned,
and a great deal of business and talking on that of the women.
In Florida the girl who has been engaged as an infant, and
for whom some payment has been made on the engagement,
is tattooed when she comes to the proper age for it. This,
uliuuhu, is done by a man whose profession it is to do it, and
who receives much money, pigs, and food in the exercise ofhis
art; a feast is made for him and for the company assembled
of friends and relations, who help to bear the expense. The
pattern is first marked out in circles with a bamboo, and the
skin is cut with the bone of a bat's wing. The amount
of tattooing varies, but the pain and swelling is always con-
siderable. No girl would be considered marriageable unless
tattooed, and the operation performed is a sign that the time
is come when the father of the young man to whom one is
engaged should parr something down with a view to the
marriage. Further advance, however, may be delayed for
months or even years before the future father-in-law goes
with his party to pay down the whole sum of money agreed
upon. Then after staying two days at least, with endless
difficulties interposed, the girl is given up, and an extra sum
of money has to be paid, na rongo ni nggoti kekesa, the money to
break the post near the door used to take hold of in going in
and out of the house, to finish her going in and out of her old238 Birth. Childhood. Marriage.	[ch.
home. This is given to the women of the bride’s party, who
then take her by the hand and give her up. They lift her
from the ground and carry heron the back of one of them out
of the house to the other party, who then take her away. The
bridegroom does not yet make his appearance. The bride then
stays in her father-in-law’s house two or three months waiting
for her parents to bring their present of pigs and food. When
they arrive with this they make a feast which is the wedding
banquet, but neither they nor the young couple partake of it.
This is the final ceremony; the young man takes his wife to
his father’s house or his own ; he is married, taulagi h The
amount given by the bridegroom’s party varies according to
the wealth and position of the families ; from fifty to a hundred
rongo, coils of native money. When fifty is given, the bride’s
party give in return five pigs ; and when a hundred, ten pigs ;
and they say that the money buys the pigs and not the damsel.
It is the duty of the young man’s relations to help him in
this matter, and they are very willing to do it, if he on his
part has been active and willing in garden-work and other
duties.
At Saa in Malanta when little children have been betrothed,
the girl, still very young, comes bringing her food with her
to spend a month or two in her future father-in-law’s house,
and to become acquainted with the family. The betrothed
children converse and j>lay together at their ease, knowing
what is proposed; and this visit is repeated while the
children are little from time to time, and part of the money,
porpoise teeth, and dogs’ teeth to be paid to the girl’s
1 ‘ During the morning of the feast, whilst the bride’s relations are waiting
about for the acknowledgment of their contributions to the wedding breakfast, it
is the custom of the boys of the village to take their bows and arrows and prowl
amongst these watchers, and so to irritate or alarm them by shooting amongst
then), that they are glad to buy immunity from this dangerous amusement by
paying a fish’s tooth. They shot over their heads and past their ears, and
between their feet, and through their hair, till one heard exclamations of
disgust and annoyance on all sides.’—Rev. J. H. Plant. It should be observed
that this is in the bridegroom’s village, and that the boys’ object is to get
bought off.239
xiv.] Saa. Santa Cruz. Banks' Islands.
father is handed over h In consequence of this familiarity,
when the girl is marriageable and all is arranged she goes
willingly enough to take up her abode in her new family,
without any real or affected reluctance on her part, or lifting
and carrying by her friends. It is sometimes, however, a long
time before the marriage is consummated, through the shyness
of the bridegroom, though the parents encourage the young
couple to be friendly, and give them opportunities of talking
and working together. The virginity of a bride is a matter
of much concern to her friends, not only because the boy’s
friends will not pay what they have promised if her character
in questionable, but because they value propriety. This all
refers to the good families in the main; among inferior
people early betrothals are unusual; the young people have not
always made friends, and the taking of the bride to her new
home is a greater affair. At Santa Cruz in the same way
engagements of marriage are often made in infancy. The
father looks out a suitable girl sooner or later, and the boy
is not told. Presents and feather-money are interchanged
between the parents on both sides. In course of time the boy
is told that a girl is engaged for him, but is not told who she
is ; he is warned only not to go near a certain house, and
guesses who it is. The youth when the time comes is often
very reluctant to marry, he cries and asks why they want
him to go away. However, when he marries he brings his
wife to his father’s house, until he builds one for himself1 2.
In the Banks’ Islands arrangements are made by the friends,
and the payment to be made agreed upon ; the young man,
or his friends for him, la yoro o lavine, give money and piigs to
secure the woman, and her friends again tango goroo nayolayla,
‘ lay hold on the face of the marriage,’ by an answering present.
1	On one occasion, when Bishop Selwyn was present, eighteen porpoise teeth,
fifty strings of money, twenty pigs.
2	I have been told by a Loyalty Island teacher living on the island that a
young married couple do not cohabit, but meet secretly for a time. This
however was not allowed to be correct by Santa Cruz boys of whom I
enquired.240
Birth. Childhood. Marriage.	[ch.
When the matter is settled the bridegroom’s friends make a
feast, and the tail of the pig is given to the bride’s father.
After due payment of the money the girl is taken to wife
without ceremony. If a girl were engaged to an old man or
one she dislikes she might run off into the bush with the
youth of her choice, and a pig given by his friends might
settle the matter. The payments for a wife are not very
heavy in this group, but vary in the different islands. A
girl betrothed as a child is here often taken to her future
home to be brought up there to know the people and, if she
belongs to another island, the language of the place. Boys
and girls, and young people generally, who are engaged are
very shy about it, and will hardly look at one another; but
as the time for marriage draws on it is correct for the youth to
make little presents and otherwise shew attention.
In the Northern New Hebrides a girl betrothed in child-
hood is taken to her future father-in-law’s house and
brought up there ; the boy often thinks she is his sister, and
is much ashamed when he comes to know the relation in
which he stands. This however is not the common way, for
it is only the children of great people who are betrothed as
infants. When the girl is old enough to be married in
Araga she is sometimes tattooed, and always assumes her
petticoat. There is some ceremony there when the marriage
day arrives; people assemble in the middle of the village,
and the father of the bride or some friend of consecprence
makes a speech. The bridegroom sticks a branch of a
dracaena into the ground and brings up the pigs, food, and
mats given for the bride. Then the orator exhorts him to
feed his wife properly and treat her kindly, and not to be
sulky with her, and he hands over the young woman, who is
attired in a new petticoat and wrapped in a new mat. There
follows a feast, and the bridegroom goes round about his
father-in-law or the orator, stroking him, to thank him. A
sort of sham-fight takes place on the occasion, in which
sometimes men are hurt, the two sides being the kinsmen of
the bridegroom and of the bride; if one of the bridegroom’sXIV.]
Betrothal.
241
brethren is hurt, it is his business to make it up with him by
a present. Whether this can he called capture is very
doubtful; hut no doubt it represents the feelings with which
the bride’s kinsmen regard the loss of her services ; it cannot
he the loss of any rights of intercourse, since she was un-
approachable by any of them. The bride is taken by female
friends to the bridegroom’s house or his father’s, sometimes
crying, and dragged along if she dislikes the match. An
unwilling bride will refuse intercourse with her husband, or
run away to some one she likes better; in that ease, if her
return seems hopeless, a pig is given and she stays. Some-
times, again, the young couple are so shy of one another that
they will not speak after marriage, as it has not been proper
to speak before ; the friends and neighbours do not approve
of this, and it is on this account that it is thought wise
to ensure mutual acquaintance and liking by bringing the
engaged couple together as children. At Lepers’ Island
among people of consequence infant betrothals are the proper
thing; when a chief has a girl born to him another will
come and secure her for his boy, giving a present and
making a feast. If the boy is old enough at the time of the
feast he is made to take a j^oung drinking cocoa-nut, put a
draciena leaf into the eye of it, and give it to the infant’s
mother for the child to drink. This is called JiuJiu vuhe goroe,
to give her suck with a drinking cocoa-nut and secure her1.
When the betrothed girl is about ten years old, the boy’s
mother takes her to her own house to teach her household
ways, and the children are for the time brought up together.
When she is growing big her parents take her back for her
tattooing, which is done in lines all over her body, with
nothing on her face. Hitherto she has worn nothing except
on great occasions; now she is always clothed; in the house
1 ‘ When a female child is born, the father or mother of some male child
brings him into the house with a bamboo of water, and the male child proceeds
to wash the female, who henceforth becomes his betrothed, and they grow up
together recognizing each other as man and wife.’—Rev. C. Bice; at Maewo,
Aurora Island.
R242
Birth. Childhood. Marriage.	[ch.
she wears only the para, a fringed band, and out of doors she
is wrapped in mats. At this time the women on both sides
are very busy talking over the price to be paid by the
bridegroom’s friends, which varies much; if the youth is
the son of a great man, a tusked pig and a hundred mats
are not too much, for common people two or three ordinary
pigs and fifty mats will do. These arrangements often take
a long time, for the women delight in them ; and while they
go on the young couple are encouraged to converse and not
be shy. At last the wedding day arrives; the young man’s
friends take the pigs, mats, and uncooked food, and set them
down in the middle of the bride’s village. The bride’s
friends have already prepared cooked food, and the two
parties eat together; the marriage is thus complete. The
bride is carried on someone’s back to her new home, wrapped
in many mats, and with palm-fans held about her face, because
she is supposed to be modest and shy. Formerly there was
always a house built beforehand, and food prepared for the
young couple, who ate together as a sign of union. Here, as
elsewhere, a girl will run away to one she loves, and he may
keep her if he can satisfy her friends ; but sometimes he is
afraid of the disappointed bridegroom’s friends, sometimes he
is too poor to make it up with hers; he is obliged then to
decline to receive her, and she must go back, unless indeed
she had rather strangle or hang herself.
The reserve exercised between those who have been brought
near by marriage, and the mutual avoidance of some, has been
alveady mentioned, and must be understood to begin as soon
as the engagement of the young couple is complete. There
is a singular example of this kind of reserve at Florida, where
there is no difficulty in meeting or using the names of persons
connected by marriage. In case of a woman having had a
lover before her marriage she will never after marriage mention
his name, calling him a hanu, that person, and she will never
meet him in the path. Iler husband looks out for this, and
observing who it is demands money of the former lover, and
when that is paid no more notice is taken of the matter; butxiv.]	Adziltery.	243
if satisfaction were refused a quarrel would ensue. A newly-
married husband, without waiting for observations, would
often beat his bride to make her confess who her paramour
had been.
The old habits of the people in all the islands were very
strict in regard to adultery. The punishment of the man
was death ; but the punishment was very generally mitigated
on payment of a fine. Thus in Florida an injured husband
would give money to the chief to have the adulterer killed,
and he, if he could, would make satisfaction in money to both
chief and husband, and so save his life. The woman, however,
would probably be made a rembi, harlot, for the profit of the
chief. At Saa an adulterous wife is dismissed, and the
adulterer is punished with death, exile, or fines. In case of
adultery in a chief’s family he will have the adulterer killed,
or receiving a large fine will let him go to Ulawa and live ;
a man’s friends will sometimes hide him for a time, hoping
that the chief will consent to take a fine, and if they find him
implacable, will kill the man themselves or give him up.
When the wrong has been done among lesser men, the friends
of the husband and of the adulterer will often fight about the
damages to be exacted; and from this cause indeed most of
the fighting throughout all the groups proceeds. A chief of
Saa, Ulawa, Ugi, or San Cristoval, who has had the adulterer
killed, makes a bea, a stage from which speeches are made,
and rewards those who have killed him ; and for himself at
Saa he makes the sacrifice toto ’akalo (page 137), to clear
away any danger that may haj>pen to him as the cause of
death. In the Banks’ Islands and Northern New Hebrides
the treatment of adulteiy is very simple; the man is shot or
clubbed by the husband or his friends in their first indig-
nation, and the woman is beaten, scolded, and threatened with
death, but the matter is compromised very generally by
payment of money and pigs. A wife jealous of her husband,
or in any way incensed at him, would in former times throw
herself from a cliff or tree, swim out to sea, hang or strangle
herself, stab herself with an arrow, or thrust one down her
it 2244 Birth. Childhood. Marriage. [ch.
throat; and a man jealous or quarrelling with his wife would
do the like ; but now it is easy to go off with another’s wife
or husband in a labour vessel to Queensland or Fiji.
Divorce is easy and common, and maybe said to be effected
at the will of either party, though it is naturally more easy
for a man to dismiss his wife than for a woman to leave her
husband. The great difficulty is the property given for the
wife; a man does not wish to lose this, and will try many
times to get back a runaway wife before he gives her
up, giving’ presents to her relations. If the separation is
amicable, the father of the woman will give back what he
has received, having in view another son-in-law. After some
time sqient in wedlock the woman has worked out a good deal
of what was given for her, and a pig or two on one side or the
other settles all claims. It may be said that generally man
and wife get on well together, and are united by their great
fondness for their children.
The Levirate obtains as a matter of course. The wife has
been obtained for one member of a family by the contributions
of the whole, and if that member fails by death, some other is
ready to take his place, so that the property shall not be lost;
it is a matter of arrangement for convenience and economy
whether a brother, cousin or uncle of the deceased shall take his
widow. The brother naturally comes first; if a more distant
relation takes the woman he probably has to give a pig.
In Lepers'’ Island if a man who is a somewhat distant cousin
of the deceased wishes to take the widow, he adds a pig to the
death-feast of the tenth or fiftieth day to signify and support
his pretensions, and he probably gives another pig to the
widow’s sisters to obtain their good-will. If two men contend
for the widow she selects one, and the fortunate suitor gives a
pig to the disappointed. In fact a woman, when once the
proper payment has been made for her, belongs to those who
have paid, the family generally; hence a man, as in the story
of Ganviviris, will set up his sister’s son in life by handing
over to him one of his own wives; not because the young
man has a right to his uncle’s wives, but because the womanXIV.]
245
Polygamy. Polyandry.
is already in the family. It is a rare thing- that a woman
should remain a widow long-, hut there is a period and sign of
mourning. In San Cristoval men and women wear large
tassels of grey shells as ear-rings for a mark of widowhood; to
cut the hair short and daub the person with soot and ashes is
very common. In the Banks’ Islands the widow or widower
refrains from some article of food, such as yam, for a year or
lesser time, and wears a rope round the neck, a ganaro, as a
sign of it. To val or navo in this way is a sign of mourning
for any loss.
Polygamy is the rule, though a considerable number of
wives is found only with rich and elder men. One wife is
commonly enough for a Florida man, who says that he can
neither manage nor afford more than one. When a great
man like Takua had seven it was thought a great many. At
Yisale in Guadalcanal- Tekaunga has, or had, sixty wives;
in Florida a wife costs much, in Guadalcanal- but little. At
Saa ordinary men have two wives, great men eight or ten.
In the Banks’ Islands a well-to-do man has ordinarily two
wives, and may have three. A Vanua Lava man was not
long ago believed to have thirty. As a man advances in
life and survives his maternal uncles, his brothers, and his
cousins, the widows of these tend to accumulate around him ;
they are called his wives, live in houses round him and work
for him, but he lives practically with two or three younger
women whom he has taken for himself. In Lepers’ Island,
where men generally have two wives, a singular arrangement
is approved of, whereby a man who has a young wife takes an
elder woman, a widow, for a second, to look after the first.
Some men there have three or four wives ; a great man
lately had fifty wives, and his son and successor has already
thirty ; a chief inland is credited with a hundred. Poly-
gamy in all the islands is a fruitful cause of quarrels and
bloodshed.
Anything properly called Polyandry is unknown, nor is it
easy for natives to conceive of it as a possible marriage state.
Still cases are known in the Banks’ Islands where two246	Birth. Childhood. Marriage.
widowers live with one widow, and she is called wife to both,
any child she may have being called the child of both. Such
cohabitation, however, is not so much marriage as a convenient
arrangement for people who find themselves alone in later
life. In Lepers’ Island, also, there has been a case lately in
which two young men, brothers, returned from Queensland,
have taken a young woman as a wife for both. The two men
have their gamali, and she has a house ; there are two chil-
dren. This is a new and unheard-of thing, brought, as the
natives say, from Queensland 1; the young men could only
get one woman to marry, and in their absence had lost all
care for propriety. In the Banks’ Islands also cases occur
where a husband connives at his wife’s connexion with another
man; this is not counted adultery because it is allowed; it
is not polyandry, for the second man is not a husband; the
thing is thought discreditable.
1 ‘ Polyandry is to be seen under our eyes here in Fiji among the “imported
labourers.” ’—Rev. L. Fison. The women being very few in proportion to the
men become something like communal wives to those of their island, or group,
one of whom they could have married at home.CHAPTER XV.
DEATH. BURIAL. AFTER DEATH.
That death is the parting of soul and body, and that the
departed soul continues in an intelligent and more or less
active existence, is what Melanesians everywhere believe;
but what that is which in life abides with the body, and in
death departs from it, and which, speaking of it in English,
we call the soul, they find it very difficult to explain. Like
people very much more advanced than themselves, they have
not in the first place a perfectly clear conception of what it is ;
and in the second place, like other people, they use words to
represent these conceptions which they acknowledge to be
more or less figurative and inexact, when the precise meaning
of them is sought for. Nor is it any wonder that, believing
that such a thing as what we call a soul exists in connexion
with the body which they see, they speak of and conceive of
the soul when separate from the body as if it were in some
form and shape visible to the eyes. Thinking, to Melanesian
natives at any rate, is like seeing; what is thought of must
have some form to be thought of in ; and a visible thing that
has a likeness to that which is thought of offers its name as a
convenient means of expression. ‘ Suppose that there are
people who call the soul a shadow, I do not in the least
believe that they think the shadow a soul or the soul a
shadow; but they use the word shadow figuratively for
that belonging to man which is like his shadow, definitely
individual and inseparable from him, but unsubstantial.
The Mota word we use for soul is in Maori a shadow, but248 Death. Burial. After Death.	[ch.
no Mota man knows that it ever meant that. In fact my
belief is that in the original language this word did not
definitely mean either soul or shadow, but had a meaning one
can conceive but not express, which has come out in one
language meaning shadow, and in the other meaning some-
thing like soul, i.e. second self1.’ So Mr. Fison writes. ‘The
Fijian word for soul is yalo, that for shadow yaloyalo. I have
not been able to find any trace of the belief that shadow and
soul are indentical. I believe that Williams’ remark about
the “ two spirits ” was the result of a confusion in his mind
concerning yalo and yaloyalo.’ The civilized observer is
always ready to assume that the savage takes a childish view
and has absurd beliefs, when all the while, if the savage could
put him to a close examination, his own conceptions would
be found very indistinct and his expressions mainly figur-
ative. Many a voyager, not an observer, carries away as a
sort of joke the story that the natives think their shadows
are their souls, who could not tell exactly what he means
by the word ‘ soul ’ which he uses himself. It may suffice
to make the statement that, whatever word the Melane-
sian people use for soul, they mean something essentially
belonging to each man’s nature which carries life to his
body with it, and is the seat of thought and intelligence,
exercising therefore power which is not of the body and is
invisible in its action. Further understanding of their con-
ceptions cannot well fail to follow from the study of the
words they use.
It has been shown (page 1 21) that among Melanesians there
is a universal belief in the existence of personal intelligent
beings of power superior to that of men, and without bodies
such as are the bodies of mankind; and that these beings,
whom we call spirits, are distinct from the disembodied spirits
or souls of dead men which we call ghosts. It is not sur-
prising, therefore, that the same word which is used for spirit
should be used also to describe the soul of man while it is
clothed with and animates his body. The soul of a living
1 Quoted in Professor Max Muller’s Hibbert Lectures, p. 88.XV.]
Souls.
249
man in Florida is a tarunga, a spirit, individual, not corporeal,
separable, though not in fact often separated during life from
his body. So also is such a spirit as a vigona a tarunga,
though they are not very ready to acknowledge the existence
of such a tarunga. During life a man’s tarunga goes out of
him in dreams and returns; at death the tarunga departs
finally from the body; the corpse is simply a dead man, tinoni
mate; the separated soul is no longer tarunga, a spirit, but
tindalo, a ghost. But tarunga is not equivalent to soul any
more than spirit is equivalent to soul; a soul is a tarunga, and
no other name is given to it. Bigs have tarunga ; when a
man sells a pig he takes back from it its tarunga in a draesena
leaf, which he hangs up in his house ; thus he does not lose
more than the fleshly accidents of the pig, the tarunga remains
waiting to animate some pig that will be born. A pig is an
animal of distinction and has a tarunga; yams and such
things have none; they do not live with any kind of in-
telligence. Is it then to be said that a man and a pig
are alike as regards the tarunga, that each has a soul ? The
native to whom the question is put intelligibly will laugh;
such a thing cannot be ; when a man dies his tarunga is a
tindalo, a ghost, and who ever heard of a pig tindalo1? In the
Banks’ Islands the spirit that never was a man, but was
always superhuman in intelligence and power, and, as far as
could be conceived of a personal being, was incorporeal, was
called a vui (page 124). It would not be surprising, therefore,
if the word vui were used to describe the soul; and it is
impossible to say that it would be incorrectly so used, for the
nature of a vui and of a soul is the same (page 124)2. The
words accepted in use to represent the English soul are in
Motlav ialegi, in Mota atai. A man’s talegi goes out of him in
sleep, not in all dreams, but in such as leave a vivid im-
pression of scenes and persons visited when the man awakes.
1	The word tciluna, another form of tarunga, is found in Santa Cruz, but I
am unable to assign to it anymore particular meaning than c spirit.’
2	In fact I have known a native of Mota writing of his inward feelings to
speak of his vui, na vuiic.250 Death. Burial. After Death.	[ch.
When a man fainted the talegi had gone out, but life remained.
Life depends on the presence of the talegi in the body, health
depends upon its sound condition. A ghost can damage the
talegi, either spontaneously or moved by magic charms, and
then the man falls sick, and his body is weak, or the ghost
takes the talegi away, and the man lies just breathing- in his
chest; but it would not be said that all disease is the result
of the talegi being taken or damaged ; it would not be said of
ulcers for example. The talegi has no form, but it is like a
reflection or a shadow. The Mota atai is no doubt the Maori
ata, which means a shadow, but atai never means shadow in
Mota, nor is niniai, which means shadow and reflection, ever
used for soul. At the same time damage was thought to be
done to the body by means of the shadow or reflection, as
when the shadow fell upon a certain stone (pages 182, 4), or a
man’s face was reflected in a certain spring of water (page 186).
The power of the spirit, vid, belonging to the stone or the
spring could lay hold on the man by his shadow and reflection,
as the power of a ghost could get a hold on a man by a
fragment of his food, the shadow being in a way another
person of the man. But that the shadow was the soul was
never thought. So in Saa they talk of a ghost snatching
away the shadow of a child that starts in sleep, and a
doctor undertakes to bring it back; but, says Joseph Wate,
who tells the tale, ‘ they say shadow and they mean some-
thing else, for the shadow of the child is seen all the while.’
The use of the word atai in Mota seems properly and origin-
ally to have been to signify something peculiarly and
intimately connected with a person and sacred to him, some-
thing that he has set his fancy upon when he has seen it in
what has seemed to him a wonderful manner, or some one has
shewn it to him as such. Whatever the thing might be the
man believed it to be the reflection of his own personality;
he and his atai flourished, suffered, lived and died together.
But the word must not be supposed to have been borrowed
from this use and applied secondarily to describe the soul; the
word carries a sense with it which is applicable alike to thatXV.]
Souls.
251
second self, the visible object so mysteriously connected with
the man, and to this invisible second self which we call the
soul. There is another Mota word, tamunite, which has almost
if not quite the same meaning as atai has when it describes
something animate or inanimate which a man has come to be-
lieve to have an existence intimately connected with his own.
The word tamaniu may be taken to be properly ‘ likeness,’ and
the noun form of the adverb tama, as, like. It was not every
one in Mota who had his tamaniu; only some men fancied
that they had this relation to a lizard, a snake, or it might be
a stone; sometimes the thing was sought for and found by
drinking the infusion of certain leaves and heaping together
the dregs; then whatever living thing was first seen in or
upon the keaq> was the tamaniu. It was watched but not fed
or worshipped; the natives believed that it came at call, and
that the life of the man was bound up with the life of his
tamaniu, if a living thing, or with its safety; should it die, or
if not living get broken or be lost, the man would die.
Hence in case of sickness they would send to see if the tamaniu
was safe and well. This word has never been used apparently
for the soul in Mota; but in Aurora in the New Hebrides it
is the accepted equivalent. It is well worth observing that
both the atai and the tamaniu, and it may be added the
Motlav talegi, is something which has a substantial existence
of its own, as when a snake or stone is a man’s atai or tamaniu ;
a soul then when called by these names is conceived of as
something in a way substantial. There is another word used
in Mota, never applied to the soul of man, but very illustrative
of the native conceptions, and common also to Aurora, where it
is used with a remarkable application; this word is nunuai.
In Mota it is the abiding or recurrent impression on the
senses that is called a nunuai; a man who has heard some
startling scream in the course of the day has it ringing in his
ears ; the scream is over and the sound is gone, but the nunuai
remains ; a man fishing for flying-fish paddles all day alone in
his canoe with a long light line fastened round his neck; he
lies down tired at night and feels the line pulling as if a fish252	Death. Burial. After Death.	[ch.
were caught, though the line is no longer on his neck ; this is
the nunuai of the line. To the native it is not a mere fancy,
it is real, hut it has no form or substance. A pig, therefore,
ornaments or food have a nunuai; hut a pig has no atai, or
may hesitatingly and carelessly he said to have one. This
word is no doubt the same as niniai, shadow or reflection,
meaning not shade, which is malumalu, but the definite figure
cast by the interception of rays of light upon the ground, or
formed by reflection in the water. There is no confusion in
the native mind between a shadow and a reflection, but they
use the one word to describe that definite individual something
which, itself insubstantial, is so closely connected with the
substance that gives it form.
This word, in the form nunu, is used in Aurora to describe
the fancied relation of an infant to some thing or person from
which or from whom its origin is somehow derived. A woman
before her child is born fancies that a cocoa-nut, bread-fruit,
or some such thing has some original connexion with her
infant. "When the child is born it is the nunu, of the cocoa-nut,
or whatever it may be, and as it grows up it must by no means
eat that thing, or it will be ill; no one thinks that there is
any real connexion in the way of parentage, but the child is a
kind of echo. There is another way in which a child is the
nunu of a person deceased. Thus Arudulewari is the nunu of a
boy whom his mother brought up and who was much beloved
by her. This boy died not long before Arudulewari was born,
and then the mother believed that her foster-child had wished
to come back to her, and that the infant was bis nunu. But
Arudulewari is not that person, nor, as he says, is his soul
supposed to be the soul of the dead boy; he himself is the nunu,
the echo or reflection of him. So Vilemalas, a name which
means ‘ Bring-the-day-after,’ was born after an adopted child
of his mother’s had been killed and not brought back till the
day after, and he is the nunu of the slain person come in his
place. In Mota there is no such use of nunuai, but there is a
notion that a man may have something, not exactly his atai
or tamaniu, with which he is originally connected. A manXV.]
Solomon Islands. Ghosts.
253
will scatter money into a deep pool among the rocks on the
shore into which the tide is pouring, a sacred place ; he will
call on his near forefathers, dive in, and seat himself upon the
bottom. If he sees anything there, a crab or cuttle-fish
perhaps, he fancies that is his real origin and beginning; he
gets mana, supernatural power, from it, and pigs will multiply
to him. At Maewo, Aurora, nunu is never the soul; that is
tamanm; and it is a very remarkable thing that the body
is thought to be the integument of the soul. It is a strange
thing that in the islands of the New Hebrides nearest to
Aurora, in Pentecost and Lepers5 Island, the word tamtegi
is used for soul, for this is no doubt the Mota tamate, dead
man; the natives, however, have persisted in their assertion
that they have no other word.
We are now prepared to follow the corpse of the dead
Melanesian to his burial, and his soul after its separation from
the body to the abode of the dead ; and it is probably better
to do this by taking the funeral customs and the beliefs
concerning the state after death together as they are found in
the various islands. It will be seen that there is a considerable
agreement both in customs and beliefs, and a universal consent
about some particulars, such as in belief in the continued
existence of the separated soul, and in the practice of com-
memorating the dead by feasts at which some portion of food
is offered to them. In the Solomon Islands the ghost, being
the principal object of worship, occupies, as has been shewn, a
much higher place in the religious world of the natives than
it does in the islands which lie to the eastward, and on that
account it is desirable, before entering upon details, to draw
the distinction between the two classes of ghosts which is
generally recognized in the former islands. The distinction is
between ghosts of power and ghosts of no account, between
those whose help is sought and their wrath deprecated, and
those from whom nothing is expected and to whom no ob-
servance is due. Among living men there are some who stand
out distinguished for capacity in affairs, success in life, valour
in fighting, and influence over others; and these are so, it is254
[CH.
Death. Burial. After Death.
believed, because of the supernatural and mysterious powers
which they have, and which are derived from communication
with those ghosts of the dead gone before them who are full
of those same powers. On the deatli of a distinguished man
his ghost retains the powers that belonged to him in life, in
greater activity and with stronger force ; his ghost therefore
is powerful and worshipful, and so long as he is remembered
the aid of his powers is sought and worship is offered him ;
he is the tindalo of Florida, the lio'a of Saa. In every society,
again, the multitude is composed of insignificant persons,
‘ numerus fruges consumere nati,’ of no particular account for
valour, skill, or prosperity. The ghosts of such persons con-
tinue their insignificance, and are nobodies after death as
before ; they are ghosts because all men have souls, and the souls
of dead men are ghosts ; they are dreaded because all ghosts are
awful, but they get no worship and are soon only thought of
as the crowd of the nameless jiopulation of the lower world.
In the Solomon Islands, in Florida, when a man dies, his
spirit, tarunrja, becomes a ghost, tindalo, and the body is
spoken of as a dead man, tinoni mate. Some ghosts are wor-
shipped and exercise much spiritual activity in the world as
tindalo (chaps, vii, viii); some pass at once out of the con-
sideration of all but members of the family. The corpse is
usually buried. Common men are buried in their garden
ground, chiefs sometimes in the village, a chiefs child some-
times in the house. The grave is not deep; it becomes
sacred in so far as no one will tread upon any grave, while
the burial-place of a man whose tindalo has become an object
of worship is a sanctuary, viuiuha ; the skull is often dug
up and hung in the house. Men and women are buried
alike, their feet turned inland; the return from the funeral
is by another road than that along which the corpse was
carried, lest the ghost should follow. A man is buried with
money, porpoise teeth, and ornaments belonging to him, his
bracelets put on upside down; and these things are often
afterwards secretly dug up again. Sometimes a man will
express a wish to be east into the sea; his friends thenXV.]
Florida. Burial Customs.
255
paddle out with him, tie stones to his feet, and sink him.
In Savo, near by, common men are thrown into the sea as a
rule, and only great men buried. In Florida the funeral of a
chief, or of one who is much esteemed, is delayed for two
days after death; and after the funeral the relatives and
friends assemble to kilo clato na tinoni mate, that is to say, to
partake of a funeral feast, and to hang up on the dead man’s
house his cloth, his axes, spears, shield, and other properties,
heaping yams and other food upon the ground. At the feast
a bit of the food is thrown into the fire for the deceased, with
the call, ' This is for you.’ As the mourners eat, they are
anxious about swallowing the food well down ; if a morsel
sticks in any one’s throat, it is a butuli, a portent, the man
will die. When they hang up the dead man’s arms on his
house, they make great lamentations ; all remains afterwards
untouched, the house goes to ruin, mantled as time goes on
with the vines of the growing yams, a picturesque and
indeed, perhaps, a touching sight; for these things are not
set up that they may in a ghostly manner accompany their
former owner, they are set there for a memorial of him as a
great and valued man, like the hatchment of old times.
With the same feeling they cut down a dead man’s fruit-
trees as a mark of respect and affection, not with any notion
of these things serving him in the world of ghosts ; he ate of
them, they say, when he was alive, he will never eat again,
and no one else shall have them. There is a certain notion
that burial is a benefit to the ghost; if a man is killed any-
where and his body is not buried, his ghost will haunt the
place ; when a man’s head has been taken, and his skull added
to some chief’s collection, the ghost for a time, at least,
haunts about; and so it is also when the arms and legs of
men murdered or executed for crimes are sent to distant
places to shew what has been done. Ghosts of men whose
heads have been taken are seen without their heads. The
abode of the departed is Betindalo; but yet ghosts not only
haunt their burial-places and come to the sacrifices offered to
them, but they are heard at play by night blowing panpipes,256
Death. Burial. After Death. [ch.
(lancing and shouting. Betindalo is apparently situated in
the south-eastern part of the great island of Guadalcanal to
which the ghosts pass over through the district of Florida
nearest to it, Gaeta. Here appears a ship of the dead, almost
alone in Melanesia. The Gaeta people used to believe that
all the ghosts of Florida passed along a path through their
gardens leading to a point of land where they assembled ; as
they passed along nothing was seen, but a twittering sound
was heard; while they were waiting at the point their
dancing was heard at night. From time to time a canoe
came over from Guadalcanar and took the ghosts across to
Galaga, opposite to Gaeta. They landed first upon a rock
near to the shore, and there for the first time became aware
that they were dead. Arrived upon the shore, they met a
certain iindalo with a rod, which he thrust into the cartilage
of their noses to see if they were pierced ; if that were so,
there was a good path the ghosts could follow down towards
Marau at the extremity of Guadalcanar; ghosts who could
not pass this test were not allowed to follow the path, but
had to make their way as they could with pain and difficulty.
Living men in canoes when nearing the shore at Galaga have
seen the forms of the dead and recognized the persons, but
on near approach they disappeared. A man not long ago
alive at Gaeta once appeared to die, but revived to tell
the story how he bad passed with others along the path of
ghosts, and had gone to take his place in the canoe which
came for them at night ; but a tall black iindalo, he said,
whom he recognized, forbad him to come aboard, and sent
him back into the world again.
At Bugotu, in Ysabel, the spirit, tarunga, leaving the dead
man, tinoni dhelie, becomes a ghost, iindadlio; the place of
ghosts is the little island of Laulau, but they haunt their
graves, and are seen at night, disappearing when approached.
The ghosts, as they fly through the air and near Laulau, light
first on certain rocks where they become aware of their sad
condition. Living men visit the island, as in the story of
Samuku, and see these rocks; they see also forms as of menxv.]	Bugotu, San Crist oval.	257
which vanish as they are approached ; they find paths round
the island neatly kept, and bathing-places cleared of stones ;
if they hang up fish in the trees, they seek for them in vain
in the morning ; marks made to shew a road are taken away.
On the top of the island is a pool of water, Kolapapauro, and
thither the ghosts, when they arrive, repair to present them-
selves to Bolafagina, the tindadho who is the lord of the
place. Across the pool is a narrow tree-trunk lying, along
which the ghosts advance; Bolafagina examines their hands
to see if they have the mark cut upon them (a conventional
outline of the frigate-bird ; page J 80) which admits them to
his company; those who have it not are thrown from the tree
into the gulf beneath, and perish out of their ghostly life.
When a chief dies, they bury him so that his head is near
the surface, and over it they keep a fire burning, so that they
may take up the skull for preservation in the house of the
man who succeeds to power. An expedition then starts to
procure heads in honour of the deceased, now become a
tindadho to be worshipped. Any one not belonging to the
place will be killed for the sake of his head, and the heads
procured are arranged upon the beach, and believed to add
mana, spiritual power, to the new tindadho ; until these
are procured the people of the place do not move about.
The grave is built up with stones, and sacrifices are offered
upon it h
At Wango in San Cristoval the soul, ’aunga (another form
of tarunga), departed from the body becomes a ghost, ’ataro, and
the ghost on leaving the body is believed to make its way to
three small islands near Ulawa. On his first arrival there the
ghost feels himself still a man, and does not realize his con-
dition ; he finds friends, and gives them the news of the place
he has just left. After some days a kingfisher pecks his head,
and he becomes a mere ghost (page 190). The existence of
the ghosts in these islands, Rondomana, is shadowy and
1 ‘ The dead man’s wife and child were then dragged to the open grave and
strangled there, and their bodies thrown in, together with his possessions, guns,
rifles, money, and valuables of all kinds.’—Rev. A. Penny.
S258
Death. Burial. After Death.	[ch.
inactive ; they range aimlessly about and lodge in caves. Men
landing on the islands in stress of weather see them on the
beach ; hut they dread living men, and disappear when closely
approached. It must be taken that these 'ataro which abide
in Rondomana are but the ghosts of common men who while
they lived had no power, mana ; for there are ’ataro also which
are active and powerful, feared, invoked, and propitiated,
present in full activity in the places in which they dwelt as
living men. Here, as elsewhere, a man’s ghost has in greater
force the power which the man had in his lifetime, when he
had it from his communication with the ghosts that went
before him; and those who have lately died have most
power, or at least are the most active sources of it. The
ghost of the great man lately dead is most regarded; as
the dead are forgotten their ghosts are superseded by later
successors to the unseen power. The bodies of common
people are cast into the sea, but men of consequence are
buried, and some relic of them, skull, tooth, or finger-bone,
is taken up and preserved in a shrine in the village.
There are, therefore, land ghosts and sea ghosts. The former
are seen about the villages and heard to speak, haunt-
ing’ their graves and relics; their appearance that of men
lately dead, their voice a hollow’ whisper. Their aid can be
obtained by those who know them, and they are believed to
fight among themselves with ghostly weapons. The ghosts
that haunt the sea have a great hold on the imagination of
the natives of the south-eastern Solomon Islands, and as these
people love to illustrate their life in sculpture and painting,
they show’ us clearly what they conceive these ghosts to be.
There was many years ago at Wango a canoe-house, oha, full
of carvings and paintings representing native life; it had
along its wall-plates and lower purlins a series of pictures
illustrating the principal affairs of life as naturally as may be
seen in Egyptian tombs ; a feast from the first climbing after
cocoa-nuts through all the processes of preparing and cooking
food ; a fight upon the beach (the sea shewn to be so by the
fishes depicted in it), with all its various action ; voyages andXV.]
259
San Cnstoval. Sea-ghosts.
accidents at sea, and among them a canoe attacked by what
appeared at first sight demons horned and hoofed. These were
the ghosts that haunt the sea, their forms having suffered a sea
change, and composed as much as possible of fishes, tbeir spears
and arrows long-bodied garfish and flying-fish. If a man on
returning from a canoe voyage or from fishing on the rocks
falls ill, it is because one of these sea ghosts has shot him
(page 196). These ghosts are therefore propitiated in any
Sea-ghost, from a native drawing.
danger at sea with areca-nuts and fragments of food cast to
them among the waves, and their anger is deprecated in
prayers. Sharks also have 'ataro in them, the ghosts of
those who have foretold their future appearance in that form.
In these islands, as elsewhere, the death-feast is held, and
a morsel of food is thrown upon the fire as the dead man’s
share. A great man also was commemorated by an image of
him in a canoe-house or on the stage put up at feasts, and
before it food was placed.260 Death. Burial. After Death.	[ch.
At Saa, and in the neighbouring- parts of Malanta, the same
word is used for the soul of a living man and the ghost of an
ordinary person, 'akato, which is another form of the 'ataro of
San Cristoval. The 'akato, which goes out of the body in
dreams and returns again, goes out filially in death, leaving
the body after a natural death rale, after a violent death lalamoa.
The ghosts of ordinary people are 'akato, and nothing else ;
those of chiefs, valiant fighting men, men of conspicuous
success in life, of men who are saka, have spiritual power, are
expected to become lio’a, ghosts which again are saka, have
spiritual power, and are worshipful accordingly; as the ghost
of a warrior when found by proof to act becomes lio’a ni mate, a
ghost powerful for death. The origin of death is ascribed, as in
the Banks’ Islands and New Hebrides, to the old woman who
having changed her skin afterwards resumed the slough, which
had caught upon a reed. All ghosts upon leaving the body
swim first to a point of land at Saa, then to a point of Ulawa,
then to the Three Sisters, ’Olu Malau, then to a point of San
Cristoval near Ilada, and lastly to Marapa, two islands lying
off Marau in Guadalcanal-. While the body is rotting the
ghost is weak ; when the smell has ceased the ghost is strong,
it is no longer a man. The ghostly inhabitants of Marapa
live something like a worldly life ; the children chatter and
annoy the elder ghosts, so they are placed apart upon the
second island ; men and women ghosts are together, they have
houses, gardens, and canoes, yet all is unsubstantial. Living
men cross to Marapa and see nothing; but there is water
there in which laughter and cries are heard ; there are places
where water is seen to have been disturbed, and the banks are
net as if bathers had been there. A dead chief makes his
canoe and his house there, like those which his living- son is
building, but they are built of the soft esculent hibiscus, and
come to nothing ; it is like the play of children. This ghostly
life is not eternal; the mere ’akato soon turn into white ants’
nests, which again become the food of the still vigorous ghosts;
hence a living man says to his idle son, ‘ When I die 1 shall
have ants’ nests to eat, but then what will you have ? ’ Thexv.]	Saa. Hades. Burial.	261
lid a ghosts of power last longer because they are saka, and the
more saka they are the longer they last; they are remembered
and worshipped on earth, and so long their strength remains ;
but when men forget them and turn to worship some more
lately dead, and when no sacrificial food is offered them, their
power fades away, and they turn into white ants’ nests like
the others. There are two rulers of Marapa, who are called
lio a, though not strictly so, because they were never men and
never pass away—the chief Kari’eu, and inferior to him, Kikiri-
ba’u, the cutter—off’ of heads. These two go about in their
canoes, one collecting ghosts, the other heads; in times of
sickness at Saa if trunks of trees are seen floating by at sea
they are said to be the canoes of Kari’eu and Kikiriba’u. The
ghosts whose abode is in Marapa can return to Saa to visit
their village and their friends again. They are seen like
shadows, having a certain form fleeting and indistinct, some
hideous, some not unpleasant. If one who sees a ghost is
not frightened he can discern the features and know who
it is ; but if he is frightened he sees only a dreadful some-
thing. A man who for some reason wishes to see a ghost,
puts lime from his betel-box upon his forehead, and then he
plainly sees.
The burial of common people at Saa is a simple affair; an
ordinary man is buried the day after death, a very inferior
person at once. There is a common burial-place which does
not get filled up because the bones are from time to time taken
up, after the flesh has decayed, and heaped on one side. Men
of some rank and consideration are not buried for two days ;
women sit round the corpise and wail, i'o pei rae, and people
assemble to see the dead man for the last time and to eat the
funeral feast. If a very great man dies, or a man much
beloved by his son, the body is hung up in his son’s house,
either in a canoe or enclosed in the figure of a sword-fish, Hi.
Very favourite children are treated in the same way. The
figure of the sword-fish is cemented like a canoe and painted ;
no smell whatever proceeds from it. If the body is put into
a canoe they make fine raspings or chippings of a certain tree262 Death. Burial. After Death.	[ch.
to spread under and above it, and lay over that certain large
leaves, and planks above all. The canoe is not closed over
with cement, but there is very little smell. Sometimes the
corpse is kept in this way for years, either in the house or in
the oha, the public canoe-house, waiting for a great funeral
feast1. When a year of good crops arrives a man will say,
• Now we will take out Father.’ The corpse is taken then, if
that of a comparatively inferior person, to the common burial-
ground, if of a chief, to the family burying-place, where
sacrifices are made as above (page 137) described. The skull
and jawbone are taken out, and these are called mangite, which
are saka, hot with spiritual power, and by means of which the
help of the lio’a, the powerful ghost of the man whose relics
these are, can be obtained. The mangite is enclosed in the
hollow wooden figure of a bonito-fish, and set up in the house
or in the oha, where it remains till the lio'a goes out of
memory or credit. In the oha on the beach at Saa they lately
made a boat-like receptacle, and put in it all the old mangite of
forgotten lio'a. A man will sometimes hang up his wife in
this way, and when she is taken out to the burying-place her
jaw will be kept in a basket, or one of her teeth in a bit of
bamboo, and hung up in the house as a memorial. It can
be nothing more, for no woman’s ghost can be a ghost of
power, lio'a, nothing but a mere departed soul, akalo. Men
will put food as an offering of affection and memory to
these mangite, and to the figures and canoes containing
corpses.
Burial, however, is not universal at Saa. It often happens
that the corpse of a chief or lesser man is thrown into the sea
(to do which is called kulu rae), either at the request of the
deceased, or to save trouble. The friends tie a bag of sand to
the feet of the corpse, paddle out, and sink the corpse in a
certain place where are hollow rocks below ; it never rises to
the surface. When this is done a mangite is preserved, hair or
nails, tied in a bundle and hung up. Sometimes, but rarely,
1 A similar custom was observed by Mr. Forbes at Timor. Naturalist's
Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, p. 435.xv.]	Saa. Burial. Santa Cruz.	263
a corpse is burnt, at the wish of the deceased h When this
is done they preserve a mangite by wrapping the head about,
or enclosing it in a hollowed stem of banana, to keep it from
the fire. The place where a corpse is burnt is sacred. Some
corpses, again, are laid in a canoe or on a stage beside a place
of sacrifice, holes being made in the bottom of the canoe, and
bamboos set to carry away rain-water and the liquor of the
corpse into the ground. At one time they did at Saa what
now they do in Bauro; they poured water on the corpse until
the flesh was consumed, and then took the skull as a mangite.
In these methods of disposing of the distinguished dead,
whose ghosts are expected to be lid a possessed of power, there
may be seen very probably the effect of the belief, of which
mention has been made, that the ghost continues weak while
the corpse continues to smell; the Ho a of the dead man sunk
in the sea, burnt, enclosed in a case, or rapidly denuded of
flesh, is active and available at once.
The ornaments of a dead man are buried with him, or are
kept in remembrance of him. A man’s cocoa-nut and bread-
fruit-trees, and others, are cut down by his friends after his
death, out of respect to him as they say; and they deny that
they think that such things follow a man in any ghostly form,
since it seems ridiculous to suppose that even pigs can have a
soul, akalo. To cut trees down in this way is to ngoli; for a
dead chief they ngoli-ta!a, they fence round a certain plot of
ground and put his canoe in it in memory of him, with his
bowl and weapons; his friends add such things of their own
in honour of him, and decorate the fence with leaves and
flowers. For a man of no great position they content them-
selves with throwing yams and other food upon the roof of
the dead man's house in memory of him.
At Santa Cruz the corpse is buried in a very deep grave in
the house, wrapped in many mats. For two days they cry
over a man and then bury him; on the fifth day the funeral
1 This is the only example within my knowledge of the method of disposing
of the dead which Dr. Guppy found to be common in the chiefs’ families about
the Bougainville Straits.264 Death. Burial. After Death.	[ch.
meal is eaten and all is over. Inland they dig- up the bones
again to make arrowheads, and take the skull to keep in a
chest in the house, saying that this is the man himself, and
setting- food before it. The departed souls are duka; they
assemble after death at a place called Natepapa, and from
thence go on to the great volcano Tamami (called Tinakula),
in which they are burnt and renewed, and where they stay.
Nevertheless they haunt the bush in Santa Cruz, and are seen
at night, and when it is wet and dark; men see them like
fire, with fire under their armpits like fire-fiies, and are much
afraid of them.
The abode of the dead has in all these examples been shewn
to be above ground, in islands more or less remote from those
in which the living dwell, and all known and visited by living
men. It is probable, however, that a certain belief in an
underworld is also present, the Turivatu of the Florida invoca-
tion in sacrifice (page 131), a region beneath the earth
corresponding to that country above the sky where Kamaka-
jaku or Vulaninggela visited the sun. The belief in Santa
Cruz that ghosts pass into the great volcano implies some-
thing of a descent below, as does the parallel belief at Savo
that the volcanic crater there is the receptacle of departed
spirits. When we pass, however, to the eastward the ghosts
no longer have their abodes upon the surface of the earth, but
underground. From the Torres Islands to Pentecost in the
New Hebrides, the name of the nether-world is, with varia-
tions, Panoi, to which all the openings—whether by volcanic
vents or unknown mouths—throughout all these neighbouring
islands lead. In all alike the ghosts assemble at certain
places and go down to what is their proper place, though they
can return again to earth. The locality of Panoi is unknown,
save that it is underground ; and Panoi is one, not a separate
receptacle for the ghosts of each separate island. The people
of the Torres Islands, however, and those of Pentecost, do
not know that they have a common belief and use a common
word.
In the Torres Islands the word used for soul is a form ofXV.]
265
Origin of Death.
the Mota atai, nete. The departed soul goes down to Panoi
near a rock called Vat tugua, not far from Lo, where a very
ancient casuarina-tree growing at high-water mark overhangs
the sea, and endures the heaviest storms and highest tides
unmoved. In these islands the practice has prevailed of
laying out the bodies of the dead on stages near the houses,
to putrefy and decay; but they now begin to bury.
The story of the Origin of Death noticed in the account
of Saa (page 260), has its parallel in the Banks’ Islands and
again in the New Hebrides. At first men never died, but
when they advanced in life they cast their skins like snakes
and crabs, and came out with youth renewed. After a time a
woman growing old went to a stream to change her skin ;
according to some she was the mother of Qat, according to
others Ul-ta-marama, Change-skin of the world. She threw
off her old skin in the water, and observed that as it floated
down it caught against a stick. Then she went home,
where she had left her child. The child, however, refused to
recognize her, crying that its mother was an old woman not
like this young stranger ; and to pacify the child she went after
her cast integument and put it on. From that time man-
kind ceased to cast their skins and died. In another Banks’
Island story this woman is Iro Puget, Bird’s-nest Fern, the
wife of Mate, Death h There are many others. In one the
cause of the introduction of Death was the inconvenience of
the permanence of property in the same hands while men
changed their skins and lived for ever. Qat therefore sent
for Mate, who dwelt in Panoi, or by the side of a volcanic
vent in Santa Maria, and assured him that he would only
have to go to Vanua Lava and not be hurt. Death there-
fore came forth; they laid him on a board, killed a pig, and
covered him over; then they proceeded to divide his property
1 There is a saying at Mota, when any one is observed not to have his ears
bored, Iro Puget te nine word 0 pue ape qatuma, ‘ Puget will break her bamboo
water-carrier on your head.’ The meaning is that Ro Puget will be met at the
entrance to Panoi, and will so treat any one who has not followed the custom.
This is parallel to what has been noticed at Florida and Bugotu.266 Death. Burial. After Death.	[ch.
and eat the funeral feast. On the fifth day when the conch
was blown to drive away the ghost, Qat opened the covering
over Mate and found him gone ; nothing but bones remained.
In the meanwhile Tangaro the Fool had been set to watch
the way to Panoi, where the paths to the lower and upper
worlds divided, lest Mate should go below; the fool sat in
front of the way to the world above, and let Mate go down
to Panoi; all men have since followed Death along that path.
Another story makes the same fool—under his name of
Tagilingelinge—the cause of death, because when Iro Puget
set him to guard the way to Panoi in prospect of her own
death, he pointed out that way to her descending ghost
instead of the way back to the world, and so she, and all men
after her, died and never came back to life. In Lakona,
part of Santa Maria, the story goes that Marawa stole a
woman whom Qat had made (page 157) > and iQ the night
while he and she were sleeping Qat came quietly, pulled out
their teeth, and shaved their heads. Then he took the hairy
plexus of the tree-fern and put it on their heads, giving the
names of baldness and of the ‘ second hair,’ as gray hair has
since been called. Then he spread spider’s web over their
eyes, so that when they woke in the morning dimness was
over their sight. The woman refused to go back to him ; so
in a song he called for baldness, blindness, toothlessness, old
age, and death, because she had disobeyed his word.
The soul, aiai or tategi, goes out of the body in some
dreams, and if for some reason it does not come back the man
is found dead in the morning ; when a man faints, mate mule,
dies and goes, his soul really starts on the way to Panoi, but
is sent back; the other ghosts hustle him away from the
mouth of the descent, or his father or friend turns him back,
telling him that his time is not yet come ; so he relates
when he returns. In true death the separation of soul and
body is complete, the atai or talegi becomes o tamate or natmat,
a dead-man, and the corpse also is spoken of by the same word.
The ghost, however, does not at first go far, and possibly may
be recalled ; the neighbours therefore bite the finger of the deadxv.] Banks Islands. Death. Burial. 267
or dying' person to rouse him, and shout his name into his
ear, in hope that the soul may hear it and return. The soul
possibly may be caught. A woman at biota some years ago
who knew that a neighbour was at the point of death heard
something rustling in her house, like the fluttering of a moth,
just when cries and wailings told her that the soul had flown.
She caught the fluttering thing between her hands and ran
with it to the house of death, crying that she had caught the
atai; she opened her hands above the corpse’s mouth to restore
the soul, but there was no recovery. The ghost does not at
once leave the neighbourhood of the bodjr, it hangs about the
house and the grave five or ten days, and shews its presence
by noises in the house and lights upon the grave. It is not
generally in the Banks’ Islands thought desirable that the
ghost should stay longer than the fifth day, and there is a
custom of driving it away with shouts and blowing of conchs;
in some places bull-roarers are sounded. It will be con-
venient to take the proceedings which follow after death in
the various islands of the group, before describing the course
of the departed ghost into the lower world and its condition
there. These proceedings consist of the mourning, the
funeral, and the funeral-feasts.
In the Banks’ Islands the dead are generally buried. It is
the duty of the members of the other Veve, of the other 1 side
of the house,’ to dig the grave. The burial takes place earlier
or later, according to the estimation in which the deceased is
held. In an ordinary case it is on the second day; the friends
cry round the corpse, and women are hired to wail meanwhile.
The place of burial is in the bush not far from the village;
but a great man, or one whose death was remarkable, was
buried in the village near the gamal, and a favourite son or
child in the house itself. In the latter case the grave was
opened after fifty or a hundred days, and the bones taken up
and hidden in the bush, or some of them hung up in the
house. Some bodies were not buried, but laid up in the bush
outside the village in a chest, joagoro, such as those in which
dry bread-fruit is kept, and there left to decay. This is called268 Death. Burial. After Death.	[ch.
to salo; as is also the laying' of the corpse in a shallow cave
under a projecting rock. There was, however, and still remains,
a custom in some places of keeping the body unburied and
putrefying in the house as a mark of affection. At Gaua, in
Santa Maria, it was the women’s business to watch the corpse,
laid on a mat over cross sticks between two slow fires in the
house for ten days or more, till nothing but skin and bones
was left; during which time they drank the drippings of the
corpse. The same was done in former days at Mota. The
description of the funeral of a man of rank at Motlav will
hold good generally of any of the Banks’ Islands. The corpse
of a great man was brought out into the open space in the
middle of the village, loosely wrapped in a mat, with his
malosaru dress of ceremony on, his som ta Rowa necklace round
his neck, his forehead smeared, it, with red earth, mea, his
armlets, and bracelets of pig’s tusks reversed, but no bow
at his hand, on his breast a cycas leaf, no mele, the mark of
his rank in the Suqe, and the leaves of the crotons, sasa,
belonging to his Tamate societies. By his side were heaped
bunches of cocoa-nuts tied together, and plenty of old dry
cocoa-nuts, yams of various kinds, caladium, and all kinds of
food, with a bunch of the leaves of a particular dracaena stuck
upon the heap, the tcaria garame tamate, the ghost’s tongue
dracaena, all of which were afterwards heaped upon the grave.
Then a man ready of speech made an address to the ghost,
telling him, when they asked him in Panoi whether he were
a great man, to say what was heaped beside him. The orator
would not spare his faults 1; if he were a man of bad character
he would say to him, ‘ Poor ghost! will you be able to enter
Panoi ? I think not.’ Then the burial took place. Upon
the grave was set a bamboo vessel of water with a cocoa-nut-
shell cup, and a little dish with a roasted yam in it; as the
food was eaten by rats they renewed it, for the rat might be
the deceased himself, at any rate during the five days that the
ghost remained about the place. At Gaua they hang up pigs
1 11 myself heard Par at at Mota abuse I Mala, because he had died without
having completed his suqe for him.’—E-ev. J. Palmer.XV.]
Banks Islands. Secret Btirial.
269
that they have killed, or parts of them, at the grave ; when
the man goes down to Bono, Panoi, the ghosts there will see
him come down with these, and think much of him. The
Gaua people, however, deny that pigs have ghosts1. It is
interesting to observe how a judgment upon a dead man’s
merits was pronounced. Not long ago when a corpse was
being buried at Motlav, a man whom the deceased had ill
used followed with a stone, and threw it on the body, crying
out, ‘ You have ill used me, and persecuted me to kill me—
you have died first.’ At Gaua when a great man died his
friends would not make it known, lest those whom he had
oppressed should come and spit at him after his death, or
govgov him, stand bickering at him with crooked fingers and
drawing in the lips, by way of curse. Relatives in Motlav
watch the grave of a man whose life was bad, lest some man
wronged by him should come at night and heat with a stone
upon the grave, cursing him. Sometimes the friends will
have a sham burial, and hide the grave in which the corpse is
really laid; because if a man in his lifetime has had rna/ta to
shoot and kill, to charm wTitb the talamatai and in other ways,
there will be mana for the same purpose in his corpse; men
will want to dig up his bones for arrows and for charms, and
his skull to roll the string upon wherewith to tie their talamatai.
So at Gaua when a body has been wasted over the fire, they
bury the bones in the village under some large stone, and
cover it with another stone, lest the hones should he taken up
for arrows. At Ureparapara2 as soon as a man dies his
1	If the pigs that have been killed are seen in Panoi, it may be thought that
they must have souls to be seen there, since their bodies are at the grave. But
this is not the native notion; of a pig or an ornament there is a certain some-
thing, shadow, echo, of itself that can be seen, but there is not that which man
has, the intelligent personal spiritual part which separates from the body in
death. When a ghost is seen what is seen ? Not the soul, the atai, but the
dead man, the tamate; for the atai can never be seen, the nunuai, echo, of the
body, its taqamjiu, outline, can be seen, but indistinctly. When an English
ghost appears in the dead man’s habit as he lived, is it thought to be his soul
that appears ?
2	For this and for what follows concerning Lakona, I am indebted to the
Rev. J. Palmer.270 Death. Burial. After Death.	[ch.
friends bring a quantity of food of all binds to hang up on
white peeled palaho sticks round the corpse when it is laid
out in the middle of the village. Then the orator makes his
speech to the deceased, giving him messages to take to the
dead, bids him carry the news of the place, especially what
has been done and is intended to be done in the various
societies, and tells him for whom in Panoi besides himself
the food hanging round him is intended. When the speech
is ended, two small yams or caladium roots are roasted over a
fire of cocoa-nut fronds lighted for the pmrptose ; the cooking
is only in show, and the food is scraped with the left hand
instead of the right. A small joint of bamboo is filled with
water, and put with the food into a new clean basket for the
ghost. At the same time a prig is killed. When all this is
done, the body is tied up> in a mat and followed to the grave bjr
all the men and women, the children remaining in the village.
All the food is buried on the body; or if there be too much,
some is hung above the grave, whence the bolder preople take
it secretly and eat it.
The ghost is driven away in the same island five daj's after
death with a peculiar ceremony. Bags of small stones and
short pieces of bamboo are provided for the preople of the
village, and are charmed by those who have the knowledge of
the magic chant appropriate for the purpose. Two men,
each with two white stones in his hands, sit in the dead
man’s house, one on either side. These men begin to clink
the stones one against the other, the women begin to wail,
the neighbours—who have all assembled at one end of the
village—begin to march through it in a body to the other end,
throwing the stones into the houses and all about, and
beating the bamboos together. So they ptass through till
they come to the bush beyond, when they throw down the
bamboos and bags. They have now driven out the ghost,
who up to this time has been about the house, in which the
widow has for these five days never left the dead man’s bed
except- upon necessity; and even then she leaves a cocoa-nut-
to represent her till she returns. At Mot-lav the ghost is notXV.] Driving away Ghosts. Funeral-Feasts.
271
driven away unless the man who has died was badly afflicted
with ulcers and sores, either a gov covered with sores, or a mama-
nigata with a single large ulcer or more. When such a one
is dying the people of his village send word in time to the
next village westwards, as the ghost wall go out following the
sun, to warn them there to be prepared. When the gov is
dead they bury him, and then, with shell-trumpets blowing
and the stalks of cocoa-nut fronds stripped of some of the
leaflets beating on the ground, they chase the ghost to the
next village. The people of that village take up the chase,
and hunt the ghost further westward; and so on till the sea
is reached. Then the frond stalks are thrown away and the
people return, sure that the ghost has left the island, and will
not strike another man with the disease.
The series of funeral-feasts or death-meals, the 1 eating the
death ’ as they call it, follows upon the funeral, or even begins
before it, and is the most important part of the commemora-
tion of the dead ; it may be said, indeed, to be one of the
principal institutions of the islands. The number of the
feasts and the length of time during which they are repeated
varys very much in the various islands, and depend also upon
the consideration in which the deceased is held. The meals are
distinctly commemorative, but are not altogether devoid of the
purpose of benefiting the dead ; it is thought that the ghost
is gratified by the remembrance shewn of him, and honoured
by the handsome performance of the duty; the living also
solace themselves in their grief, and satisfy something of
their sense of loss by affectionate commemoration. It is
not easy to determine howT far there is now any feeling that
friendly association of the living and dead is continued by
their both partaking of the meal, when a morsel of food is
thrown aside with a call to the deceased. At ordinary meals
when the oven is opened a bit of food is put aside for the
dead, with the words ‘This is for you, let our oven be well
cooked.’ At a death-meal the words are ‘ This is for thee.’
It is readily denied now that the dead, either dead friends
generally in the one case or the lately deceased in the272 Death. Burial. After Death.	[ch.
other, are thought to come and eat the food, which they say
is given as a friendly remembrance only, and in the way of
associating together those whom death has separated ; but it
can hardly be doubted that the original intention at least was
a common participation in the meal. It is not altogether
consistent, however, with the conception of an underground
abode of the dead, that they should be conceived of as present
at the later feasts, though the first of all is held while they
are still believed to be about. The eating the death, gana
mated, begins with the burial; they eat first, as they say, his
grave ; after that they 1 eat his days.’ The days are the fifth
and the tenth, and after that every tenth day up to the
hundredth, and it may be in the case of a father, wife, or
mother even so far as the thousandth. At Nembek, a part of
Gaua, where they lay the corpse between fires, they bury the
remains and finish the death-meal on the fifth day. At
Tarasag, near by, when a great man dies the people from all
the villages around bring mashed yams the next morning to
the place where the dead man lies, and eat them there. The
people of the place begin the death-meals that day with a
large ovenful, and continue on the tenth, and on every
successive tenth day. Sometimes for a very great man they
eat every day up to the fiftieth, and then start with the fifth
and tenth day feasts. For counting the days so that the
guests from distant villages may arrive on the proper days,
they use cycas fronds, one in the hands of each party, on
which the appointed days are marked by the pinching off or
turning down of a leaflet as each day passes. At Ureparapara
the first fire for the death-meal is lit on the day after the
burial; after that on each fifth day to the hundredth, and if
they go beyond that every tenth day to the thousandth. At
Lakona, in Santa Maria, immediately after the death the pigs
of the deceased which he has left as legacies are distributed to
his relatives, and one or two more are killed and the meat
given to the people of the place. In the evening he is buried,
or laid out in a chest or in a cave, and no food or water is
put with him. Next morning begins the counting of theXV.]
Banks Islands. Hades.
273
death-days. If the deceased was a great man, a tavusmele,
there will be a drum brought out and they will dance, to
drive away their grief, as they say, so that they may eat the
death-meal with cheerfulness ; visitors come to dance and are
paid for it. The death-feast lasts only five days for a woman,
six for a man. The concluding action is peculiar to Lakona;
on the sixth day after death each man kills a sow, and the
women come and buy the meat, from which the last death-
meal, called the Yulqat, is supplied. The next morning all is
finished with a meal 1 to clear away the Yulqat.’
The ghost when it leaves its former dwelling-place makes
its way to Panoi, to which there are many entrances, called
sura, in the various islands, some underground and unknown,
some well known, like the rock Aliali on the mountain at
Mota, volcanic vents on the burning hill Garat over the
lake at Gaua, and the great mountain of Yanua Lava, the
Sur-lav, great sura. The ghosts congregate on points of land
before their departure, as well as at the mouth of the sura,
where they are heard dancing, singing, shouting and whistling
with land-crabs’ claws on moonlight nights. To these points
of land and the sura entrances to Panoi it was possible for
ghosts who had already descended to return, and it was
thought by some that they would come out to receive,
sometimes with dancing, the freshly dead, shew them their
various haunts, and conduct them to the underworld. There
is also the notion that there are sura appropriated to particular
classes of ghosts; as the sure tujoa, where simple harmless
people congregate, and the sure lumagav, where youths go who
die in the flower of their age, a place more pleasant than the
rest, where all kinds of flowers abound and scented plants.
This fancy was mostly that of women, who thought much of
all who died young, and above all of those who had been shot
for them, who had died on their account, me matewolira ti,
paid for them the price of their death.
A precise and consistent account of the condition of ghosts
after they have arrived at Panoi, and of that place itself, is
difficult indeed to obtain from the natives of this group ; nor
T274 Death. Burial. After Death. [ch.
perhaps is it reasonable to expect it. But the stories of
descents to Panoi shew in their relation what are the common
conceptions in the native mind. It does much to reconcile
the varying accounts to recognise the truth that Panoi is not
a single receptacle the same for all, and that there is a
corresponding distinction between one class of ghosts and
another. This is clearly believed at Motlav, where they say
that when a ghost goes down the sura it is met by another
ghost, and according to the character of the man in life is
allowed to enter into Panoi, or sent back to another pilace,
dreading which it goes to wander on the earth. The true
Panoi is a good place, and there is a bad place besides which
is sometimes meant when the word Panoi is used. Thus, if a
man has kil’ed another by treachery or witchcraft, when after
death he descends the sura he finds himself withstood at the
entrance to Panoi by the ghost of the man he has wronged;
he sees another path leading to the bad place he dreads, and so
he turns back to earth. If one has killed a good man without
cause, the good man’s ghost withstands his murderer; if one
man has killed another in fair fig’ht he will not be withstood
by the man he slew ; if a bad man slew a bad man both
would be together, but not in the true Panoi. This division
is very important—that there are some ghosts who enter
Panoi, and some who are not allowed to enter, these last
being of bad character. Very important indeed also is it, as
shewing native notions of moral right and wrong so often
denied to them, to observe what sort of men were admitted
and who were refused. "Who was the man of good character
in life? It is answered that he was one who lived as he ought
to do, me toga manfag, an answer that may have no moral
meaning. But who was the man of bad character ? It is
answered, one who killed another without due cause, or had
caused a death by charms, one who used to steal, to lie, one
given to adultery. Thus those who enter into the true Panoi
still live as they ought, we toga manfag, they live in harmony,
in a good way of living; those who remain in the bad place
quarrel and lie in misery, not in physical pain indeed, butxv.] Banks Islands. Judgment. Childless Ghosts. 275
restless, wandering back to earth, homeless, malignant, pitiable;
these are they who eat excrement and open their mouths for
wind; these are they who do harm to the living out of spite,
who are dreaded as eating men’s souls, who haunt the graves
and woods. There is a singular belief at Lakona concerning
this kind of judgment after death. The ghost’s path leads
him to the volcanic vents of the burning hill Garat, and as he
runs along the ghosts assemble to receive him. They beat
him, ghost as he already is, to death, then cut him to pieces,
and each ghost will take a piece. They then put him
together again, and if he has in his lifetime wrongfully shot
the father, brother, or sogoi relation of any of the ghosts into
whose hands he has fallen, or done any other wrong, the
ghost who has the grievance will hide the piece of him that
he has taken; he will remain with some part of him deficient,
and when he goes down to Panoi and the ghosts ask him
what has become of that bit of him, he will tell them that
some one has kept it from him because he had done him
wrong.
The ghost of a vasi-sgona, a woman who has died in childbed,
cannot go to Panoi if her child lives, for she cannot leave her
child. They therefore deceive her ghost by making up loosely
a piece of a banana trunk in leaves, and laying it on her bosom
when she is buried. Then, as she departs, she thinks she has
the child with her; as she goes the banana stalk slips about
in the leaves and she thinks the child is moving; and this in
her bewildered new condition contents her, till she gets to
Panoi and finds that she has been deceived. In the mean-
while the child has been taken to another house, because they
know that the mother will come back to take its soul. She
seeks everywhere for the child in grief and rage without
ceasing; and the ghost of a vasisgona therefore is particularly
dreaded.
Panoi is near, under the land of living men, as death is
near to life. If a man is nearly killed he says, ‘ I have been
close to Panoi, and have returned.’ There is much there that
is like the upper world, villages, houses, trees with red leaves,276 Death. Burial. After Death. [ch.
and there is day and night; it is even a beautiful place, for
at a great festival when the village place is bright with
flowers and coloured leaves, and thronged with people dancing,
drumming and singing, the saying is that it is 1 like a sura,
as if the mouth of Panoi were opened.’ When a ghost first
descends, he waits at first outside the ghostly village; he is
weak, and he stops till he has recovered strength. The
ghosts make a dance in his honour. When he arrives they
ask him, ‘ Plave you come to stay ? ’ If he has only fainted,
it is then discovered, and he returns. The fresh ghost finds
there something like an earthly life, but it is hollow and
unreal. There is nothing that they do but talk and sing and
dance; there is no gamal, the indispensable club-house of
earthly life; men and women live together, without sexual
intercourse ; there is no fighting, there is no one in authority,
no vui, spirits, other than ghosts of men. A great man goes
down like a great man, in all his finery of ornament. The
pigs killed for his funeral feast, the food heaped upon his
grave, do not go down as he does ; he is a tamate, a dead man,
a ghost; he has as a dead man the atai, soul, that he had under
different conditions as a living man ; his ornaments are on his
person as a ghost, but the shadow, niniai, of them only, for
no such things, not even pigs, have atai. There is a further
belief that there are compartments, enclosures fenced apart, in
which those who have died violent deaths keep together ; those
who have been shot are in one place together, those who were
charmed to death in a second, those who have been clubbed
in a third together. Those who have been shot keep rattling
the reeds of the arrows they were shot with ; hence if a rat is
heard in a house making that kind of noise the saying is that
it is a reed-rattling ghost, tamate ninginingi togo. Ghosts in
Panoi have not knowledge of things out of their sight and
hearing as the vui, spirits, have ; nevertheless they are invoked
in time of need and distress, as if they could hear and help.
They come upon earth when they jflease, and see how their
friends and property are faring, and they hear the news from
new-coming ghosts. These ghosts, as distinguished fromxv.] Banks' Islands. Descents to Hades. 277
those who have no home in Panoi, are in a general way kindly
to living men; though if their friends and property are
damaged, they are angry and revengeful. It is true that men
are afraid of these and all other ghosts, because a ghost is of
itself a dreadful thing to a living man. They are seen, but
not distinctly—only their eyes like phosphorescent fungi, or
something red. Life in Panoi is eternal, unless indeed, as
some say, there are two Panois, one below the other, and the
dead die from the upper to the lower, as living men die from
earth; from the lower they never die, hut turn into white
ants’ nests, te ivog qatete nia.
Descents to Panoi have been by no means uncommon.
There was a woman, who died not many years ago, who once
much desired to see her lately dead brother; she perfumed
herself with water in which a dead rat had been steeped, to
give herself a death-like smell, pulled up a bird’s-nest fern, a
jniget, and descended by the hole she had opened. She had
no difficulty in finding Panoi, and she saw friends there who
were surprised to see her, and never discovered that she was
alive. She found her brother lying in a house, because as a
recent ghost he was not strong enough yet to move about.
He cautioned her to eat nothing there, and she returned.
This descent was in the body, as was that of one Molborbor
of Valuwa, who went down and saw his wife; but a man in
Motlav, more lately dead, used to go down in sleep, his soul
descending, and his body remaining as in a trance, He could
do this at will, and received money for doing it, professing to
visit the recently dead, about whom their friends were un-
happy, and even to be able to bring them back. He never
did in fact bring any back ; he said he had seen the persons
and talked with them, but was prevented from bringing them
back. He, too, prepared for his soul’s descent by washing his
body with water in which a putrid rat, snake or lizard had
been steeped. There was a man in former days at Motlav,
Vanvanvegirgir by name, who going down to Panoi in his
talegi, soul, took once another man with him in his body.
This man had lately lost his wife, and went to Aranvanvegirgir27S
[CH.
Death. Burial. After Death.
to enquire about her. He was instructed to give himself the
appropriate smell with the liquor of a putrid black gecko, and
was given a stick. The two then descended, and reached
Panoi; the ghosts detected the living man, and cried out,
‘ The smell of that world! ’ The two declared that they were
really dead, and to try them the ghosts brought out dead
men’s bones, to see if they would rattle them as ghosts do,
by one, by two, by three ; they did this rightly and were
allow'ed to go on. Vanvanvegirgir went forward to find the
man’s wife, and brought her to him ; they talked together,
and the man begged her to go back to the world with him.
That she said was impossible, and she gave him a shell
armlet by which to remember her. Pie took her by the
hand and began to drag her; her hand came off, and her
body came to pieces. For, as the story is explained, ghosts
in Panoi have something more of body and substance than
they have when they come back into the world; else the
man could not have taken hold of his dead wife’s hand.
"When a ghost comes into the world, it is but a taqangiw that
is seen, a something circumscribed by an outline like a
shadow; but the ghost in Panoi, of which the other is prob-
ably again the ghost, has a tarapei, a body, which has not
only form and colour, but a certain consistency. There is
still living in Vanua Lava a woman who turned her descent
to Panoi to a useful purpose. Pier husband, a Gaua man,
died, and she herself was very ill and appeared to die. She
recovered, however, and told the people that she had followed
her husband to the hill Garat, and had seen him there bound
hand and foot. The ghosts told her, she declared, that this
was done because he had not paid his debts; ‘ Go back,’ they
bade her, ‘to the Gaua people, and say to them, Pay your
debts, don’t kill one another; this is how we shall treat such
men.’
The manner of burial in Ma wo, Aurora, in the New
IPebrides, and the belief of the people there concerning the
dead, is fully described in an account written by a native, of
which what follows is generally a translation. In the firstxv.] New Hebrides. Journey of the Dead. 279
place, he says, they think that when the soul, tamani, leaves
the body in death, it mounts into a tree in which is a bird’s-
nest fern, and sitting- among the fronds, laughs and mocks at
the people who are crying and making great lamentations
over him. There he sits, wondering at them and ridiculing
them. ‘ What are they crying for ? ’ he says ; ‘ who is it they
are sorry for ? Here am I.’ For they think that the real
thing is the soul, and that it has gone away from the body
just as a man throws off his clothes and leaves them, and the
clothes lie by themselves with nothing in them ; (the Maewo
word gavui applies in such a case, the white of an egg is the
gavui of it, the yolk the real tiling ; the word for clothes is
guvu, integument). Then the soul goes through his gardens
and along his customary paths, and finally leaves the place.
Fie runs along the line of hills till he reaches the end of the
island, and there he comes to the place of recollection, the
Maewo name for which is vat dodoma, the stone of thought;
if he remembers there bis child or his wife or anything that
belongs to him, he will run back and come to life again. In
the same place also are two rocks with a deep ravine between
them ; if the ghost clears this as he leaps across he is for
ever dead, but if one fails he returns to life again. The ghost
pursues his course running along the mountain range to the
end opposite to Raga, Pentecost, at the mate tasi, land’s end,
or brink of sea, and when he arrives safely all the ghosts of
those who have died before assemble and receive him joyfully.
They believe also that as he runs the ghosts of those whom he
has wronged in this world, whom he has foully slain by club
or arrow, or has killed by charms, take a full revenge upon
him, beating him, tearing him, and stabbing him with dag-
gers, mataso, such as men stick pigs with; one of them will
say to him, ‘ While you were still in the world you thought
yourself a valiant man ; but now we will take our revenge
upon you.’ Another path of the ghosts takes them to the
northern point of Maewo, where there is a deep gully and
three leaping-places, one for men, one for women, and one for
ulcerous persons. It is a curse to wish a man may fall down280 Death. Burial. After Death. [ch.
there; if a "-host falls in leaping he is smashed to pieces, but
runs on and comes to the hill Tawu, which is very sacred to
ghosts. Here is the mouth of the hollow which leads to
Eanoi, and here the newly-arrived g-host is beaten by those
whom he has wronged, and they cry to him, ‘ Down already! ’
Here is Gaviga, a vui, the chief of Banoi, and Matamakira, or
Salolo as the Tanoriki people say, a quarrelsome and ill-
tempered man on earth ; these stand with large and sharp
spears and try to stab the new-comers. There is a huge fierce
pig also there, which will devour all who have not in their
lifetime planted the emla, pandanus, from which mats are made.
If one has planted such he can climb up out of the reach of
the devouring beast, and for this reason every one likes to
plant, that tree. Here also, if a man’s ears are not pierced, he is
not allowed to drink water; if he is not tattooed, he must not
eat good food. Here the ghosts of those who have not joined
the Suqe hang like flying foxes upon the trees (chap. vi).
In order that his child may have hereafter a good house in
Banoi, a man, when the child is a year old, makes a little gamal,
club-house, in his garden for a boy, and puts in it a bow and
arrows and a club ; for a girl he builds a little house, and plants
an emha, pandanus, to make mats with beside it. The writer has
not mentioned how the ghosts congregate at the entrance to
the lower world, and wait there, and arc heard by men, some
at play and some crying with grief and ]iain ; the latter, the
lately dead who had just become aware of their condition ; he
allows that it is so believed, but sajos that the people of his
place, Tanoriki, are not so well acquainted with these stories as
the Tasmouri people, who live near this gulf down which the
ghosts descend. It is believed also that the ghosts in Banoi
are black, and feed on excrement, some of them at least; and
that the trees there have red leaves, and that the fowls there
are also red.
The writer goes on to describe the funeral and the death-
meals. ‘ The first thing after the death of a man of some rank,
is to cut in the bush certain vines which are called corpse-
binding vines. Then they bring together many mats (suchXV.]
Aurora. Burial.
281
as those which pass as money) to wrap the corpse in. Women
bring out mats, such as are used for sleeping on, and spread
them in the open place in the middle of the village, and over
these good clean mats. When these are ready, those who
have been at work sit on the heap of mats and begin the
wailing, so that people at a distance may know that the time
has come to swathe the corpse. Then, all having assembled
by the heap of mats, men and women carry out the corpse
wrapped in a single mat from his house to the weeping crowd;
and when they lay him on the mats spread as a bed the
crying is wonderful, nothing can be heard at all but that.
They put on his belt and his malo dress, and smear him with
red earth, and dress his hair with a cock’s feather or pigs’
tails. His mother, or wives or sisters, throw ashes over their
heads and backs. When they have swathed the corpse in mats
and bound all round with the vines, some man of the dead
man’s kin sits upon the bundle, and is carried with it by many
men to the grave, which has been dug by the side of the
gamal. After this the -wives of the deceased, or his father and
mother, do not go about as usual for a hundred days, they
spend the day at home. Men may walk about, but the female
mourners cannot go into the open, and their faces may not be
seen ; they stay indoors, and in the dark, and cover themselves
with a large mat reaching to the ground. In the early
morning the widow goes out of the house covered over with
a mat, to weep at the graveside; every day she does this till
the hundredth day, and also in the afternoon ; and not she
only, many people of the village weep. All the women put
on a mat, “as large as a single plank,” which remains on their
head as a sign that they are in mourning for the death, and
refrain from certain food ; but the immediate relatives of the
deceased may not eat yam, caladium, bananas, or other good
food; they eat only the gigantic caladium, bread-fruit, cocoa-
nuts, and mallow, and other things; and all these they seek
in the bush where they grow wild, not eating those which have
been planted. They count five days, and then build up stones
over the grave ; great heaps of stones, much larger than are2S2
[CH.
Death. Burial.	After Death.
now made, are seen where men of old times were buried.
After that, if the deceased was a very great man with many
gardens and pigs, they count fifty days, and then kill pigs on the
day called the Ulogi or Saivana. On the Ulogi, the howling,
at mid-day there is wailing at the grave-stones, which have
been dressed and adorned with leaves and flowers; some cry,
and some begin a song sacred to the dead. When the ovens
are opened the assembled crowd departs ; and the people of
the village kill pigs, and they cut the point off the liver
of each pig, and the brother of the deceased goes near the
bush and calls the dead man's name, crying “ This is for
you to eat.”
1 Upon this all cry again ; and all their body and face they
smear over with ashes ; and they 'wear a cord round their necks
for a hundred days, to shew that they are not eating good food.
If they kill many pigs like this they think it is a good thing;
but if not, they think that the dead man has no proper
existence, but hangs on tangled creepers, and to hang on
creepers they think a miserable thing. That is the real reason
why they kill pigs for a man who has died ; there is no other
reason for it but that V
‘ Meanwhile,’ he continues, ‘ the ghosts have known the
number of days since the last comer has died ; and the
relatives of the dead man have counted the days to eat the death-
meal for him, the fifth day or the tenth, and a crowd has
1 Bishop Selwyn witnessed a singular practice at Tanoriki in Aurora on the
hundredth day after a woman’s death, while the feast was being held. ‘ Pigs
were killed and yams mashed and distributed, and then the men began to go
into the bush and get long rods of a sort of ginger that tapered to a point.
These they brandished with both hands, and looked anxiously down the path
leading to the next village. Then the cry arose, “ They are coming,” and
down came some ten or twelve men, mostly young, carrying on their heads
baskets which they held with both hands, leaving their bodies completely
exposed. Long before they came in sight one heard cracks like a whip, and
saw the cause. If a smiter was ready he threw his rod back, and the sufferer
instantly stood still and received an unmerciful thwack delivered with both
hands, which shivered the rod to atoms. The point came right round the man’s
body, and I could see the long wheals afterwards, though the back was some-
what protected by the string girdle they wear.’x v. ] New Hebrides. Death-Meal. Origin of Death. 283
come together to eat and to remember him and weep. Then
they think that the ghosts and he who has lately died come
hack to the world for this, and that the ghosts call this the
great feast of the man who died. They believe that they come
and carry away food and pig’s flesh for themselves to eat; hut
men are not aware of their taking anything away, they speak
figuratively. It is just as when a little mash, or cocoa-nut, or
bit of pig is put upon a dead man’s grave for him to eat; they
do not think that the ghosts take the things as men do; not
at all, the things remain all right; but they think that they
take away the tawani of the things. And if a little is given
they think that they carry it away as if it were a great deal,
and go down rejoicing to Banoi with shouting and with songs.
Thus they do to the hundredth day, aud after that they think
no more about it.’
The Origin of Death was ascribed at Lepers’ Island, both to
the disuse of the power of changing the skin, and to the defect
of nature which had not given men that power. Once upon
a time a woman and a crab disputed the point, the woman
maintaining that the crab was better than men, changing its
shell, becoming young again, and living long. She wanted
the crab to change bodies with her ; and she blamed Tagar
because he did not make men rightly. But in accordance
with the story which is told in varying forms in the Solomon
Islands, the Banks’ group, and the New Hebrides, men had
in former times the power of changing their skin. There was
an old woman who had two grandchildren. These two boys
were one day playing at blocking back the water of a little
brook, when the stream brought down a Tahitian chestnut. One
of the boys took it, and gave it to his grandmother to roast.
Afterwards the other boy, who had at first despised the chestnut,
ran home unobserved and ate it, so that when the first boy went
for it the chestnut was gone. The boy scolded his grandmother
for neglect, and she, angry in her turn, said to the boys, ‘ You
two don’t wish to live for ever, but would rather that we should
not live.’ She had just come back from changing her skin in
the water higher up in the stream which the boys were blocking284 Death. Burial. After Death. [ch.
back; and they had seen the cast-off skin, picked it up with a
stick, and thrown it out of the water. The old woman in her
anger followed the stream down to the place where her skin
was lying on the bank, and put it on again. Since that
time mankind has lost the power of changing skins, and all
have died.
At death the soul, tamtegi, departs from the body. When
it is certain that it is gone the wailing for death begins.
At first the tamtegi does not go far away, and there are
sounds which shew its presence; they never drive it away,
it is only the soul of one who has been eaten that is driven
off with the blowing of conchs ; when the time comes it goes,
and the time is a hundred days. The corpse is buried
wrapped in the mats which serve as money. When Mairuru
died they wrapped him at once in mats, and added more
next day, till the corpse with its wraps w’as so large that it
took two days to dig a grave for it, and on the third day
they buried him. He was swathed in one hundred short mats
and ten rolls of a hundred fathoms each ; but Mairuru was
a very great man ; with common people fifty mats would be
enough for a man, five for a boy. After the funeral pigs are
killed, and five fowls, and the fowls are roasted over the fire.
When the meal is ready the chief mourner takes a piece of
fowl and of yam and calls the name of some person of the
place who has died, saying, ‘ This is for you.’ This he does
till he has called all those whose death is remembered in the
place, including the lately dead, and has given each a bit of
fowl and yam. What remains he eats himself, and then the
assembled mourners eat; this is to 1 eat the grave.’ Counting
five days from the death, they pr pare the oven for 1 eating
the death,’ and -when it is opened give morsels to the ghosts,
as on the day of burial. The same is done on the tenth day,
-which is a great day with a large assemblage, and the same
again at a similar feast on the fiftieth day. Every fifth day
also there is a death-meal, and the hundredth is the last. On
that day for a very great man there will be a hundred ovens.
The last solemnity is remarkable. On the evening of thatxv.] Lepers Island. Burial. Hades. 285
day all the people assemble in the middle of the village; a
man of the ivaivung division to which the deceased did not
belong, one near to him by male descent, mounts a tree
and calls all the names of the deceased one after another, for
a great man has many names (page 114); there is a solemn
silence as the names are called, all listen for a sound; if any
sound is heard they take it for the answer of the dead, and all
raise the wailing cry because it is the last time they will
hear his voice. They have no thought of driving away the
ghost; they call to him to come and take all their food and
all they have, and go with it to Nggalevu. If no sound
answers to the last call they think he has already gone. A
man is buried with his bow and arrows and his best orna-
ments ; but his pigs’-tusk bracelets are put on upside down.
Nggalevu will know him to be a great man by what he sees
with him and upon him, for he will be seen as a man is seen
though he be a ghost, a tamtegi; what it is of the ornaments
and other things that will be seen they have not considered,
but certainly not a tamtegi, nor a soul; it raises a smile to
ask whether there be the tamtegi of a bow. When a man
dies his cocoa-nut-trees, fruit-trees, and things in his garden
are cut down and destroyed. This is done, they say, out of a
feeling of tenderness and sorrow; no one but he shall enjoy
them.
The dead man’s soul -when it leaves his dwelling-place
makes its way along the mountain path to Manaro, to the
lake which fills the crater of the island. Sometimes men
notice recent footsteps on the path, and go down to the
villages to ask who has died and just gone up. The abode
of the dead is Lolomboetogitogi, and the descent to it is by a
volcanic vent near the lake. There ghosts assemble, and there
has always been Nggalevu, a vui, a spirit not a ghost, who
is the master of the place, and receives the new-comers.
There is also a pig by which they have to pass. Beside the
lake, on the farther side, which no man has been known to
reach, there is a volcanic vent which sends up clouds of steam.
Men go up to the nearer side of the lake and climb a tree286 Death. Burial. After Death. [ch.
which overhangs it; they cry aloud to Nggalevu to give
a sign that he is there, and a column of steam goes up. In
Lolomboetogitogi are trees and houses where the dead have
their abode; though they are thought to come out, and are
seen like fire at night, or a man in the dusk sees something'
like a dead tree-fern trunk standing before him in the path,
and fears to go on further. In Lolomboetogitogi the dead
are thought to live a happy if an empty life, free from pain
and sickness ; but there are those that come out for mischief,
hunting men to add them to their company; and if a man
has left children when he died, one of whom sickens after-
wards, it is said that the dead father takes it.
Two descents to Lolomboetogitogi are well remembered.
A young man lost his wife and much desired once more to see
her ; he took a friend and mounted to the lake; they swam
to a certain rocky islet, and the widower, giving one end of a
clue to his friend, dived into the water; as long as he was
alive, he said, he would keep pulling at the line. He arrived
at a village, and found an old friend, who warned him to keep
by himself, and by no means to eat. His wife he could not
see; he took some sweet herbs growing in the village, and
returned through the water to the rock. Another man still
living went down by a banyan root in the forest, and found
the village of the g-hosts; they gave him food, which he
brought back with him without eating any, bananas old and
black. Another descent is the subject of a story not seriously
told or believed, a sort of parody on the above, which relates
how a man made his way to an underworld of pigs, ureuremboe,
the pig-world, of which a snake, Tamatemboe, dead-man-pig,
was the master; the snake had stones in a lump at its neck,
and these stones were powerful for wealth in pigs; so the man
said who brought the stones with him, and had them for sale
or hire.
At Araga, Pentecost, there are two stories as to the Origin
of Death. In one a man and a rat dispute, the rat saying
that the man would die outright, but that himself would live
again. The man and rat meet again in the path and quarrel,xv.] Pentecost Island. Burial. Hades. 287
and the man kills the rat; it begins to putrefy: ‘How it
stinks!’ cries the man. ‘You will be as bad,’ says the rat.
‘But I shall live again,’ says the man. ‘No! like me,’ says
the rat. The other story is a variant of the common one
about changing the skin. There was a man who had two
boys living with him, and used to change his skin every day
and come out to work with them. One evening he put on
his old skin again, and the boys killed him because he had
deceived them. If he had lived, all men would have changed
their skins and never died.
A ghost after death is atmat, dead-man, but, as in Lepers’
Island, the same word is used to designate a man’s soul when
he is alive. At death the atmat leaves the body, but lingers
near it for five days. It is not driven away, but goes off itself
to the abode of the dead called Banoi; in case of fainting, the
man on recovering says he was not allowed to enter. The
corpse is watched till it is buried ; in the case of a great man
for three or four days; it is then rolled in the mats valued as
money and taken to the gamal; if a great man, the mats are
many, and the swathed corpse is set up between two stakes.
After a time it is buried ; a great man is buried in the village
place in a gam, with stones set up and with dracaenas and
other coloured shrubs planted round. After the burial the
fire is lighted for the death-meal, and they go on ‘ eating the
death ’ for a hundred days, which are counted on a cvcas leaf.
By way of mourning the relatives smear themselves with
smut and ashes. The ghosts, going away, or being let go,
make their way down the coast, along the beach, to Vatang-
gele, where they are heard singing, shouting, and drumming.
The place of assembly before the descent into Banoi is a point
of land opposite Arnbrym, where there is a stream the ghosts
cannot pass, and a tree from which they leap into the sea; a
shark waiting below bites off the noses of those who have not
killed pigs in accordance with the customs of the island.
There is a town in Banoi, with houses, trees, sweet-smelling
plants, and shrubs with coloured leaves, but no gardens, because
there is no work. The new-comer is weak at first, and rests288 Death. Burial. After Death. [ch.
before he begins to move about the place. A new arrival is
greeted by a dance ; for the husband, wife, or friend of one
already there they raparahi lolo, go through an elaborate
performance. The ghosts of those who have died violent
deaths keep together; those who have been shot with the
arrow sticking in the body, those who have been clubbed
with the club fixed into the head; those also who have died
of cough keep together. "When a ghost comes down with
the instrument of death upon him, he tells who killed him,
and when the murderer arrives the ghostly people will not
receive him; he has to stay apart with other murderers. To
the question how one is received who has killed another in
fair fight no certain answer can be given. As to the food of
ghosts in Hanoi there is a difference of opinion ; some say
they eat nothing, some that they eat excrement and rotten
erythrina wood ; probably the ghosts rejected by the happier
crowd have the dismal food. Ghosts haunt especially their
burial-places, and revenge themselves if offended; if a man
has trespassed on the grave-place of a dead chief the ghost
will smite him, and he will be sick. Ghosts seen appear like
fire. My informants tell me that no fragment of food is
offered to a ghost, a doubtful statement; but if they see
bananas or other food rotting in a dead man’s garden, they
say it is the ghost’s food, not meaning so much that the
ghost eats this, as that as is the man so is his food1.
It remains to notice what practice there appears to be in
these islands of burying the living with the dead. A case is
remembered at Saa, where the wife of a chief killed in fighting
asked for death that she might follow her husband, and was
1 At Ambrym they bury in the house; after five months they dig up the
bones, take the skull, jawbone and ribs and put them under the root of a hollow
tree. The small bones they bury again in the house, the long bones they tie
up in baskets with yams and other food and put up in a tree. The body of
a great man is not buried ; it lies in the house in a canoe or in a drum, women
and children sleep round it to watch and remove the worms ; after ten months
they take up the skull, jawbone, and long bones of arms and legs and
hang them in the house; the other bones are wrapped together and sunk
at sea.XV.]
Burial.
289
strangled accordingly. At Maewo it has often happened that
a woman has demanded to be buried with her husband or a
beloved child. Not long ago a woman insisted on it; they
dug a grave, wrapped her in mats, and buried her alive with
her child. In Lepers’ Island lately when Mairuru was buried,
the people, accusing his wife of having poisoned him, wanted
to bury her alive with him; she consented, but the presence
of a Christian native prevented this being done. The killing
or burying alive of sick persons is another matter.
uCHAPTER XVI.
ARTS OF LIFE.
The foregoing- chapters have been, mainly at least, con-
cerned with subjects to deal with which such knowledge of
the thoughts and ways of Melanesian people as can only be
gained by personal acquaintance with them, and familiarity
with their language, is most required. The present chapter will
contain notices of such matters as lie much more upon the
surface of native life, and are open to the observation of the
visitor and traveller; the arts, namely, in which the culture
of the people expresses itself, by which they build and
decorate canoes and houses, plant and cultivate their gardens,
furnish themselves with weapons and implements for war
and work, catch fish, prepare their food, furnish themselves
with clothing and ornaments, make and use money as a
medium of exchange. So long a catalogue of their arts of
life shews that Melanesians do not take a very low place
among the backward peoples of the world. To deal fully
and adequately with these matters would require much space;
it is the less necessary to do so since much information has
been already made public, as by Dr. Guppy for example,
concerning the Solomon Islands; but there is certainly room
for additions, and even in these matters there is much value
in what natives say about themselves.
(i) Canoes. The inhal >it-ants of groups of islands are likely to
be seafaring people, and canoes are naturally among the first
objects that present themselves to a visitor. Hardly any-
thing seems in my remembrance to have been more strikingCanoes.
291
than the difference between the canoes of the natives when
for the first time we passed from the New Hebrides and
Banks’ Islands to the Solomon Islands, and exchanged the
clumsy outriggered tree-trunks of the Eastern groups for
the elegant forms and brilliant ornaments of the plank-built
craft of the West. But upon consideration, the outrigger
canoe that sails must be thought to take a higher rank than
New Hebrides Canoe.
one propelled by paddles only; and certainly the outrigger
canoe is the one characteristic of Melanesia. It is only in the
Solomon Islands that plank-built canoes are seen; but there
also small canoes with outriggers are used, and these are in
fact the same with those of Santa Cruz, the Banks’ Islands
and the New Hebrides ; all alike are hollowed trunks of trees
with outriggers. Double canoes are nowhere seen in these
u 2292
[CH.
Arts of Life.
islands as in Fiji; but the aka, angga, wangga, of the Banks’
Islands and New Hebrides, is doubtless the same thing with
the ivangga of Fiji. The large sailing canoes, which in the
New Hebrides will carry forty men, are also single trunks
dug out and shaped for the hull, with sides built up and
decks laid with planks tied on with sinnet. Before the time
when the labour trade made the natives afraid to move
about, and ‘recruiting’ meant destruction of canoes for the
capture of their crews, red ‘butterfly’ sails were the common
and pleasing ornament of an island scene in the New He-
brides and Banks’ groups.
Mota Canoe.
To take the example of a Mota aka. The sail, epa, was
formed of mats, woven by women, and sewn together by men
with needles of tree-fern wood, or the bone of a ray’s sting.
The mast, turgae, with a forked butt, was stepped upon the
midmost of the three yoke-pieces, iwa/ia, which connected the
outrigger, sawa, with the hull. The yoke-pieces were fastened
to the outrigger by being lashed to wooden pegs fixed into it.
Upon the foot of the mast was stepped again the forked end
of a boom,panel-, both were stayed with ropes, tali, and in
the triangular space between the mast and boom was spread
the sail, lashed to both, and sinking in a graceful curve
between the two. A large paddle for steering, turivose, wasXVI.]
Canoes.
2 93
tied to a horn, tiqa-iaso, at the stern. The whole safety of
the vessel depended on the strength and elasticity of the
attachment of the outrigger to the hull. In former times the
work of shaping the body of the canoe and adzing out the
planks with which the sides were raised was done with shell
adzes ; and the holes for the lashings were bored with the
columella of a volute shell. A large canoe was owned in
common by several men, or by one very important person ;
money was paid for hire and freight. All canoes of any size
Santa Ckuz Canoe.
had names; when a new canoe came for the first time to
land away from home the crew was pelted in a friendly
way h
The Santa Cruz canoes, of better workmanship and form,
are substantially the same as these; the large sea-going
canoes, loju, carry a large stage on either side above a very
1 In the Torres Islands of late years there were no canoes ; the people were
reduced to use catamarans of bamboo, if they wished to cross from one to
another island. Their canoe-makers had died out, and they, very character-
istically, acquiesced, as at Lakona also they did for a time, in going without.294
[CH.
Arts of Life.
narrow hull, and have a house upon one of them for the crew.
In these canoes, with the large sail rising into curved horns,
they make long voyages to Vanikoro and other islands that
they know, steering by the stars. The Solomon Island
plank-built canoe has probably not been developed in ignor-
ance of the outrigger1. In the straits between long islands
like Malanta and Guadalcanal- the natives have prided them-
selves on the skill with which they build and paddle their
canoes. Ulawa was once a famous centre of manufacture
and of sale2. Canoes from Saa would make a six days’
voyage for trade and pleasure, to Owa, Santa Anna and
Santa Catalina, in one direction, steering by the stars at
night, and to Alite in the other. Large canoes again cross
from Alite to Guadalcanal- to exchange money and ornaments
for food, and as they return heavily laden throw out floats of
dry cocoa-nuts at night, to rest and sleep. The moon in her
second quarter lying on her back is called in Florida a ‘ canoe
of Mala.’ A very graceful little catamaran is used within the
reefs of San Cristoval; five or six stems of the fronds of the
sago-palm lashed together, the tips of them brought back by
lines towards the butts, and the end of the high curved prow
so formed decorated with a crimson streamer. A war canoe
of the first rate is a long while in building; for three suc-
cessive years I had the opportunity of seeing one at Ha'ani,
from the lea set up to gain funds when the work began to
the last ornamentation with shell carvings and streamers.
Such a canoe forty-five feet long would carry ninety men. The
form of a Florida peko is more graceful than that of the Ulawa
build; the large one in Takua’s great Mala at Boli was sixty
1	Dr. Guppy mentions Bisho]i Patteson’s notice of an outrigger canoe at San
Cristoval, said to have been built after a Santa Cruz model. Within the last
few years again it has been said that at Ulawa they have lately learnt to
catch sharks after a Santa Cruz fashion in outrigger canoes. But they
certainly caught sharks in that way more than twenty years ago; and it is
likely that if they had copied Santa Cruz canoes they had done so long before
Bishop Patteson observed the outriggers. Such small canoes are not uncommon.
2	A large Ulawa canoe is preserved in the Brenchley Museum at Maidstone ;
another is in the British Museum.XVI.]
Canoes.
295
feet long by six feet wide, and the stem and stem turned np
to the height of fifteen feet1. These canoes are all con-
structed of planks adzed out so as to leave cleats by which
they are lashed to curved rib-pieces of mangrove wood, which
give the necessary stiffness to the vessel; the edges of the
planks being sewn together with sinnet, and the seam
covered with cement. In a war canoe a rest for spears and
other weapons is set up amidships2, and various tindalo
1	Every kind of canoe has its own name; as in Florida, where the general
name is tiola, the peJco is the war canoe, with stem and stern running up to
high flat ends, and long in proportion to its breadth; mbinambina, with stern
turned up as in a pelco, but with the head straight, with a guard of planks
against the wash of the waves, and broader than a pelio in proportion to its
length; tola, with both ends turned up not very high; roko, with ends not
turned up at all.
2	In Mr. Brenchley’s ‘ Cruise of the Curafoa’ is reproduced a native jricture
of a canoe from TJgi, now at Maidstone, in which the spears are seen in their
rest; upon them is a bent bow set up upon its back, which is described as a
bowl for propitiatory libations. Though the explanation is incorrect in this
particular, sacrifices are commonly offered in canoes. The woodcut above shows[CH.
296	Arts of Life.
charms are fixed and hung on to the stem to secure quiet seas
and a favourable result to expeditions1. Canoes of importance
in these islands also have names, and festivities follow their
Figure-head of Florida Canoe.
completion; one made at Olevuga was named Biku, after
a relation of the owner; it would cany thirty paddlers and
a rest for spears forming part of a rib-piece cut out of a slab of wood and used
to stiffen a canoe amidships. The figures represent a crocodile and a dog
above, two men and two cockatoos below. To this rib-piece the cleats on the
planks are seen to be lashed.
1 In the woodcut above not only are the head, which represents that taken
when the canoe was first used, and the hanging board, which swings above
the waves with a soothing motion, full of mana, but the bamboo tubes above
wound round with red braid are stuffed with tindalo relics and leaves for
protection and success.XVI.]
Canoes.
297
as many sitters; when it was cemented with tit a, a hundred
pigs were killed for the feast. Such a canoe required a life
for its inauguration h
In the Eastern Solomon Islands, if no victim was met with in
the first voyage of a new canoe, the chief to whom the canoe
belonged would privately arrange with some neighbouring
chief to let him have one of his men, some friendless man
probably, or a stranger, who would then be killed, perhaps as
he went out to look at the new canoe. It was thought
a kind thing to come behind and strike him without
warning. Further west also captives were kept with a
view to the taking of their heads when new canoes were
launched.
It is remarkable that while the paddles used in the Eastern
Solomon Islands as far as Florida are pointed, some very
narrow and pointed indeed, those used in Ysabel have an
obtusely pointed, short, and broad blade with a compara-
tively long shaft, the latter having a crescent-shaped handle,
and the former a crutch, for the upper hand. The paddles of
the Banks’ Islands and New Hebrides are comparatively
shapeless and heavy.
A custom common to the Solomon Islands and the Eastern
groups is that of taking a new canoe about to show it with a
large party who receive presents wherever they visit. A great
deal of trading is carried on between the various islands of
each group; in two places the people live by commerce and
1 For example, Dikea, the chief of Ravu in Florida, bought his peko, named
Lake (fire), at Olevuga in the same island, for sixty rongo, a large sum of
money. It was brought over secretly and put into a Jciala, canoe-house,
built out of sight, till a head should have been procured. Dikea sent to his
brothers Sauvui and Takua for help, and when he saw their fire-signal at the
mouth of the Yula passage in the night joined them there, bringing the
new canoe, and a3 they passed through other canoes joined the expedition.
Before daylight they had ambushed at Hagalu; and in the morning a single
man, Tibona, came by them in his canoe. They hid till he was past, and then
drew down the new peko to chase him; he dived to escape, but they caught
and killed him, set up his head at the prow of the canoe, and paddled back to
Kavu with shouting and blowing conch-shells; the women and children how-
ever would not go out to see.[CH.
298	Arts of Life.
manufactures. Rowa, one of the Banks’ group, has but a
tiny population on one of the islets of its reef. They still
mainly obtain their food from Saddle Island and Vanua
Lava, carrying over in exchange fish and the money that
they make at home. Not many years ago it was believed
that if food were grown at Rowa there would be a famine in
Vanua Lava, and also that if a sow were taken there it would
devour the people ; but the Christian teacher of the place,
himself a Rowa man, has boldly met both dangers. The
other seat of commerce is on the Alite islets close to the
Malanta coast near Florida, the inhabitants of which are
enemies to their neighbours of the mainland, and have no
gardens there; they buy their chief subsistence from
Guadalcanal' with the money and the ornaments that they
make.
(2) Houses. The typical Melanesian house requires very
little description ; a roof of bamboos bent over a ridge-pole,
which is supported by two main posts, very low side walls,
and the ends filled in with bamboo screens. The dwelling-
houses in the New Hebrides and Banks’ Islands are poor,
and contain little that can be called furniture; a chest on
legs, cleverly made, to contain dried bread-fruit, a fire-place
sunk into the ground, a hole and pile of stones for an oven;
wooden hooks, cut from branching trees, hanging from the
roof with bags of food to protect them from the rats; large
wooden platters with their pestles, bowls, bamboos for water,
and wicker dishes leaning against the side walls; a few
wooden knives and tools stuck between the layers of thatch ;
mats spread upon the floor ; these may be seen everywhere;
and often there is an inner chamber, screened off with reeds.
The door is nothing but a number of stalks of sago fronds
run through the middle by a stick which is thrust down
between the double threshold of the doorway, and tied above,
when the house is empty, from outside through an opening
left above the doorway for the purpose h The gamal, club-
1 ‘ It seems to be the custom here (at Ureparapara), as well as in some
parts of Vanua Lava, for three or four families to occupy a single house. TheseXVI.]
Hojises.
299
house, is in construction the same, but larger, stronger, and
furnished with openings in the sides as well as doorways
at the ends. The roofing is thatch of the smaller sago-
palm, which makes an excellent roof, and the preparation
and fixing of which is the chief work of house-building.
The palm frond, with its midrib removed, and the leaflets
doubled over a reed, and pinned together with wooden skewers,
or spikes from the base of sago fronds (the Malay a tap),
is in all the islands what a tile or slate or shingle is else-
where. In the Solomon Islands the cocoa-nut frond is also
used, the lesser sago being apparently unknown. The roofing
there, however, is very fine, the ataps being laid very close
together, and the thatch extremely thick in the larg-e
buildings such as the canoe-houses. These, oha in Malanta
and San Cristoval, kiala in Florida and Ysabel, to which
the Santa Cruz madai and ojilau correspond, are fine and
spacious buildings; the kiala at Kolakamboa in Florida
was a hundred feet long by fifty wide, and fifty high ;
an olia, in Ugi and San Cristoval at least, was decorated
with all the skill of the noteworthy native artist h In
these the large canoes are kept, men congregate and young
men sleep, strangers are entertained, the huge wooden
bowls used in feasts are kept, the jawbones of pigs eaten
or killed in such feasts are suspended, and the skulls of
men killed in war, and sometimes no doubt also eaten in the
place, are hung up; in the oha also are the mangite of the
dead (page 262). The posts which support the ridge-pole
and the purlins of an oha are carved into figures of men,
crocodiles and sharks; a kiala is much less ornamented.
A Solomon Island dwelling-house is certainly superior to
one in the Eastern groups; its walls are higher, it is more
generally partitioned into chambers, and it is furnished with
are built very long, and have slight divisions in them, seldom more than two
feet high.’—Bishop Selwyn, Journal, 1882.
1 Brenchley’s ‘ Cruise of the Cura9oa,’ chap, xvi; Guppy’s * Solomon Islands,1
chap. iv. I have never seen any ornamentation so elaborate and interesting
as that of an oha at Wango, long since fallen into decay.[CH.
300	Arts of Life.
bedsteads which lift the sleeper from the ground ; its higher
and better-finished ridge-piece gives it a more picturesque
appearance. When the visitor from the eastward reaches
Florida he finds houses built on piles ; when he reaches Ysabel
he sees tree-houses for the first time. The pile-houses are
excellent dwellings, the side walls and the floor formed
of split bamboos flattened and interlaced, and the face of the
House at Ysabel.
house handsomely ornamented with interlacing patterns of
bamboo stained black. The dwelling-houses of chiefs are
sometimes noble buildings; a new one at Honggo mea-
sured twenty-four paces long by nine wide, and was thirty
feet high. The floor of this, of interlaced bamboo, was
raised some height above the ground, and the hearth upon
the ground occupied a sunken space. Inside such a house
small houses for several wives are sometimes ranged againstXVI.]
Hozises. Tree-houses.
301
the walls, and sometimes a tiny house on piles is built in
the middle. In former days when a chiefs dwelling-house
or canoe-house was finished a man’s head was taken for it
as for a new canoe ; a boy or woman was sometimes bought
to be killed. It is a matter of tradition that men were
crushed under the base of the great pillar of such a house,
when it was set in its place. The tree-houses, vako, are not
seen till Ysabel is reached, where they are needed as a refuge
from the head-hunters. One of these to which Bishop
Patteson mounted, was built at a height of ninety-four feet
from the ground, and was approached by a ladder from a
fortified	rock	below	which the	tree was rooted ; the house,
which had a	stage	outside it,	was eighteen feet long, ten
feet broad, and eight feet high. The houses at Santa
Cruz, according to the account given of the first discovery,
were round ; they are now square, though round houses are
said to he built. The only round house that has come under
my notice was at Ha’ani in San Cristoval, one built to
contain and shelter the village drums, and an excellent
building. Sometimes in the Banks” Islands a (jamal may
he seen the rafters of which are curved. It may he well
to notice here how the two words for house run through the
islands ;	one,	which	in Malay	is ruma, varying from that
form in	San	Cristoval to ‘ma	in the Loyalty Islands and
Santa Cruz ; the other, which is whare in New Zealand, not
by any means so common, hut vale and hale in the New
Hebrides, vale, vathe and vale in the Solomon Islands h The
absence of ancient house-mounds has been observed (page 48),
and accounted for by the little permanence of village sites.
When a ruinous house is demolished to build another on
the same site, it is found that the constant sweeping of the
1 In Maewo, Aurora, ‘ the ima is the married man’s residence. Within
this house the cooking of the food for the family is done, and the married
couples live. This house is known from the rest by having the front and
back ends worked with cane, and more pains are expended on the building of
it. The vale has no fire-place for cooking, and is mostly used as the apart-
ment of the young females before marriage, and for stowing anything that may
be inconvenient in the ima.’—Journal of Rev. C. Bice, 1886.302
[CH.
Arts of Life.
floor has sunk it below the outside level, and that this again
has been raised close round the house by accumulation of
various rubbish. When the new house is to he built, the
hollow inside is filled with the outside accumulation, and
the result is a little elevation of the site. If then an ancient
site is seen some four or five feet high, it must represent
a pretty long occupation of the ground.
In two islands far apart, in Ysabel and in Santa Maria,
there are very remarkable structures to be seen. In Bugotu,
Ysabel, Bishop Patteson slept iu 1866 in a fortified place thus
described. 1 The site for the village has been chosen on a hill
surmounted by steep, almost perpendicular coral rocks; the
forest has been cleared for some space all round, so as to
prevent any enemy from approaching unperceived ; there is a
wall of stones of considerable height on that side where the
rock is less precipitous, with one narrow entrance, approached
only by a smooth slippery trunk of a tree, laid at a somewhat
steep inclination over a hollow below.’ So also at Tega the
people built a toa,1 an impregnable fort on a rocky knoll in the
midst of the village.’ These forts are made for protection
against head-hunters. The stone buildings in a village in
Gaua, Santa Maria, are very extraordinary; nothing like
them has been seen elsewhere in these islands. There are
three small rjarnal houses on platforms about ten feet high,
built up with stones untouched by any tool, and some of
them three feet long by two deep. The building is wonder-
fully square and regular; the style quite Cyclopean, the large
stones ingeniously fitted, and the interstices filled with small
stones. Besides these platforms there are two or three
obelisks about four feet high, and a little dolmen of three
stones. There are also two ivona platforms, such as are always
seen near a gamal (page 101), but much larger, and built of
large stones very squarely put together. In one of these is a
passage for pigs with a stone lintel. These remarkable works
are shown in the frontispiece. That such stone-work exists
elsewhere in these islands cannot be positively denied, but
none has been heard of, and in the neighbouring islands thereXVI.]
Stone-work. Cultivation.
303
is nothing at all resembling it. It would naturally be
thought, therefore, to belong to former times and to a different
population; but it is indeed recent, and has proceeded from
the ambition or the fancy of a single man hut lately dead h
When he reached the rank in the suqe in which he had no
equal, and had to eat alone, he determined to build his gamal
unlike those of other men. When he took further steps, and
made his koletcole feasts (page no), he did the same. For
this he hired men from Lakona in the same island, where
they build their wona with small stones; they selected the
stones that suited Vagalo’s design, and worked under his
direction. This example of originality, and of the individual
enterprise which has produced a work single of its kind,
seems most valuable. It may help to explain the strange
trilithon at Tonga.
(3) Cultivations. The Melanesians are a horticultural people;
the skill and care with which gardens were kept and planted
could not from the first fail to strike their visitors, and
marked them off by a distinction that cannot be mistaken from
the natives of Australia. The Melanesian ‘ labourer ’ carried
off to Queensland was amazed to find men who, though black,
had no garden, and did not bring back very flattering ac-
counts of white men’s cultivation either. A garden of yams
carefully trained on reeds, kept absolutely clear from weeds,
and beautiful in the leafage of the vines, is a fine sight
indeed; gardens, in San Cristoval as an example, with the
various plots within a common fence neatly marked and
divided, shew the exact regard for individual rights; gardens
raised and worked in steps on the steep sides of Meralava
have been formed with much skill and labour; the irrigated
gardens2 of the esculent caladium or arum in Aurora and
1	Tlie death of this man Valago shewed his remarkable character. Finding
himself weak with advancing years and wasted by disease, he compelled a
young man to fight with him at close quarters. Having received an arrow
wound he died, forbidding vengeance, but expressing satisfaction that men
should say that ‘ Valago was shot, and did not die like a woman.’
2	‘Every inch that was available was used for irrigation, by means of
one little streamlet which is made to do a vast deal of work before it can3°4
[ch.
Arts of Life.
Vanua Lava (if any survive the ruin caused by the labour
trade iu the latter island), are a proof of considerable and very
ancient skill in cultivation. The esculent caladium is grown
for food in Egypt and in Syria, and its use stretches in an
unbroken chain from China throughout the islands of the
Indian and Pacilic Oceans; it is not by any accident that a
dry garden, as opposed to an irrigated one, is called uma in
Sumatra and in the New Hebrides h The respective shares of
men and women in garden work is settled by local custom.
Cultivation has produced a wonderful variety in yams, ba-
nanas, bread-fruit, and no doubt other common food-producing
plants ; I have a list of eighty names of varieties of yams, and
sixty of bread-fruit, grown in the little island of Mota,
most of which an experienced native recognizes and names at
once. It may be said generally, that the natives are fond
of planting flowering shrubs and sweet herbs about their
villages, but this is much more seen in the Banks’ Islands
and New Hebrides than in the Solomon Islands. The beauty
and variety of hibiscus, croton, dracaena, acalypha, nmaranthus,
are surprising; no village is with out its ornamental plants
and flowers. In the Banks’ Islands they know how to graft
the various kinds of croton; taking two young branches of
equal size and breaking the end off each, removing an inch of
the bark from the stock and the same length of the wrood from
the scion, bringing the bark of each to meet exactly; this is
done in damp hot weather only.
(4) Weapons. The use of the bow is universal in the islands
with which we are concerned ; but the bow is not universally
the chief war weapon. The spear is in some islands so
conspicuously the fighting weapon that it is easy for one who
reach the sea in a course of about two miles/—Bishop Selwyn, Maewo,
1878.
1 ‘ This is now the first month of their preparation for yam planting, which
they perform in different stages. After a man has marked out the range of
his garden that is to be, he determines upon the day when they shall “ umwa”
it, that is clear out all the scrub and undergrowth. Here his friends make a
“ bee ” for him, and get the business over in one day.’—Rev. C. Bice, Maewo,
1883.XVI.]
305
Weapons. Fighting.
has seen a good deal of native life to deny that the bow is
used in war, though, as in Florida for example, the use of
it is not so very rare. In Florida, Guadalcanal-, Ysabel, San
Cristoval, and to a less degree in Malanta, the proper thing
is to fight with spears ; and the fashion may not be of very
long standing, if at least we may take the narrative of the
first discoverers to be correct. With the spear comes the use
of the shield; yet the San Cristoval spearmen use no such
defence, but turn off spears thrown at them with long curved
glaives, and the shields in use in Florida are not made in
that island. Spears are generally made of palm wood, in
Ysabel of ebony; they are mostly barbed, but in Florida the
kona are headed with human leg-bones, cut and broken into
jagged points. The fighting with spears in the open, as on
a beach, is not attended with much mortality, and comes
very much to a series of duels; when one was hit, his enemy
would run in on him with his club. There are occasions on
which a combined attack is made upon a village by enemies
who have by payment and by promises secured the assistance
of numerous allies, and ‘such an attack, if not at once
successful or defeated, becomes something like a siege ; but
an open spear fight, the mutual spearing, vei totogoni, of
Florida, is not common 1; ambushes set round a village in
the night, or for a single man in the path, are more common
and deadly; in these the tomahawk is now the effective
weapon. When a young warrior in Florida killed his first
man, he would let the blood run from the weapon into his
mouth. The bows of Malanta, powerful weapons, are
commonly used in war in that island. Slings are not
unknown in the Solomon Islands, and are said to have been
brought into use for attacking the tree-houses. Men never
like to go about without something in the hand, to be used
1 According to Takua’s account of the famous fight to which he owed his
place in Florida, 200 canoes came together from the neighbouring parts to
attack Ta-na-ihu. Their first onset being unsuccessful, because anticipated,
they fought with spears on the slope of the hill for three days. The assailants
then withdrew, without much loss on either side.
X[CH.
306	Arts of Life.
in a sudden quarrel perhaps ; in Florida and thereabouts a
paddle-shaped club is a favourite walking- weapon, rau ni Aba,
the leaf, so called, of Aba, a place in Guadalcanal- where they
are made. The spears, shields, clubs, bows and arrows of the
Solomon Islands are common in museums. The spear1 is
practically unknown as a weapon in the Banks’ Islands, it
comes into use, in company with the how, in Ambrym ; the
Espiritu Santo spear, with its triple point and graduated
barbing- of human bone, is perhaps the most fearful of all
these weapons. Where they fought with hows, as in the
Banks’ Islands, an open battle was not common; much
shouting of defiance, cursing, abuse and boasting, stamping
with the heel, and grasping of the ground with the toes, a
great sign of valour, resulted in little bloodshed2. Slings,
talvava, in the Banks’ Islands were used chiefly in defence
against a night attack ; when such was expected, men would
from time to time sling stones down the paths by which the
enemy would approach ; but skilful slingers would do good
service in a fight. Clubs in the Banks’ Islands never seem
to have been the carefully, and indeed beautifully, shaped
Weapons used in the New Hebrides; with these latter arrows
are warded oft’in fighting.
The Melanesian weapons, however, which demand most
attention, and require most explanation, are the poisoned
arrows, as yet so little understood. The belief in the deadly
virulence of the poison used, and in the hideous methods of
preparing it, is too firmly fixed to readily give way. Yet
a careful examination of poisoned arrows and of their effects,
by English and by French medical officers, has resulted twice
1	Old men in the Torres Islands carry a heavy wooden pointed staff which
may be called a pike. In the Banks’ Islands a spear is called isar, stabber,
but is only known in use, as in Aurora also, to stab pigs.
2	About thirty years ago a combined attack was made by about 600 men from
the southern parts of Vanua Lava upon the people of Port Patteson, who with
tlieir allies numbered about half their assailants. Their women backed up
the attacked party, encouraging them with cries and beating upon the trees.
There was no great loss of life, and the assailants retired. Not half the
number could be brought together now.XVI.]
Poisoned Arrows.
307
over in the declaration that the reputed poison-stuff on the
arrows is not poisonous, and that therefore the fatal effects of
wounds from the arrows are not due to the preparation which
is reputed poisonous1. From the scientific side, then, the
view is clear; and if the matter is approached from the
native side, it appears with equal plainness that the deadly
quality which they believe to attach to these weapons does
not belong to what can properly be called poison. It has been
said (page 213) that the Melanesian preparations wherewith
deadly property was believed to be conveyed to food were not
properly poisonous, that the effect was not thought to be
produced by the natural properties of the substance used, but
entirely by supernatural properties imparted by magic arts;
and this although there might be deleterious qualities in the
stuff employed. Most certainly this is the native view of
what is called poison on their arrows ; what is sought, and as
they firmly believe obtained, is an arrow which shall have
supernatural power, mana, to hurt, in the material of which it
is made, and in the qualities added by charms and magical
1 1 An Enquiry into the Reputed Poisonous Nature of the Arrows of the
South Sea Islanders, by Staff-Surgeon A. B. Messer, M.D., R.N., published
by the Authority of the Lords of the Admiralty,’ 1876, has, with others, the
following conclusions. ‘ That in the numerous cases in which men have been
wounded by these arrows, no recorded instances are known of poisonous effects
following.’ 1 That the “ locked-jaw ” is not the result of poison on the arrows ;
and as this disease is the only cause of fatal results after these wounds, the
arrows themselves are not in any way dangerous beyond the severity of their
wounds, and the conditions under which they are received.’ The Report of
the Commission appointed by the Governor of New Caledonia in 1883 is
quoted by Mr. Romilly in the chapter on Poisoned Arrows in ‘ The Western
Pacific and New Guinea/ as completely dispelling ‘the vulgar notion of the
fatal nature of these weapons.’ As Mr. Romilly refers to myself, I may say
that in the two cases mentioned the man who died had been little influenced,
and the one who survived much influenced by Mission teaching, to which
indeed it is reasonable to ascribe a good deal of the absence of alarm and
distress from his mind. His constant exclamation was ‘ My mind is easy, I
have heard the Bishop/ In that year, 1870, I obtained without difficulty the
information concerning these arrows in the Banks’ Islands which is here set
forth, and which all that I have learnt since from other islands has shown to
be correct. I do not remember to have heard of the renewal of the poison,
which is likely enough.
X 2[CH.
308	Arts of Life.
preparations. That a punctured wound in the tropics is often
followed hy tetanus, that the breaking1 off of a fine point of
bone in a wound is sure to be dangerous and likely to be
fatal, that an acrid or burning substance introduced by the
arrow into the wound will increase inflammation in it, are
facts altogether outside the native field of view. The point
is of a dead man’s bone, and has therefore mana, it has been
tied on with powerful mana charms, and has been smeared
with stuff hot and burning, as the wound is meant to be,
prepared and applied with charms ; that is what they mean
by what we, not they, call poisoned arrows. And when the
wound has been given, its fatal effect is to be aided and
carried on by the same magic that has given supernatural
power to the weapon.
Poisoned arrows, as they are called1, are used in the Solomon
Islands, Santa Cruz, the Banks’ Islands, and New Hebrides.
In the Torres Islands and Lepers’ Island arrows are used for
fighting which are not poisoned, yet belong entirely to the
same class with those that are, being as much valued,
trusted and feared as the others ; a very instructive fact: in
Lepers’ Island both kinds are used. There is a great differ-
ence in the size and weight of the arrows of various islands,
and in the proportion of the parts, but the structure is every-
where the same. There is a shaft of reed, a foreshaft of hard
wood, tree-fern or palm, and a point of human bone ; the
point is let into the foreshaft, and that into the shaft, and
the joinings are firmly bound with fine string or fibre.
Santa Cruz arrows are uniformly nearly four feet long,
and weigh about two ounces; Banks’ Island arrows are
about three feet nine inches long, and weigh about an
ounce ; Torres Island arrows are only two feet ten inches
long, weighing three-quarters of an ounce. The bone point
of a Santa Cruz arrow is seven inches long, and the fore-
shaft of hard wood, curiously carved and coloured, is sixteen
inches long. The bone head of a Torres Island arrow is
1 Natives would never use the same word for the preparation with which
their arrows are smeared and for that which they mix with food.XVI.]
Poisoned Arrows.
309
a foot long1, tlie fore-shaft, eight inches, the reed-shaft twenty
inches. The one is a heavy and powerful weapon, requiring a
large and powerful bow; the other is slight and weak, little
more than a human hone fitted for the bow; one is poisoned,
the other is not; both are in native estimation equally deadly.
Some of the New Hebrides and Solomon Island arrows have a
very small point of bone. It is the human bone first of all
that in native opinion gives the arrow its efficacy; the hone
of any dead man will do, because any ghost has mana to work
on the wounded man; but the bone of a man who was
powerful when alive is more valued1.
Though it is the human bone that gives in the first place
the deadly quality to the arrow, yet the bone must be fitted
into the shaft with the magic charms which secure super-
natural power to the weapon. The maker sings or mutters
charms as he ties the bone to the foreshaft; hence, as I have
been told, the mana is put in where the bone joins the foreshaft.
These charms are known but to a few whose business it is
to make the arrows; but still if one should, as did the young
man at Omba who made arrows of his brother’s bones, take
the bones of one he knew in life and call upon his ghost,
as he would be sure to do, in binding on the head, no doubt
his arrows would be perfectly well prepared. The ‘ poison,’
again, is an addition to the power of the bone; the magical
efficacy of this preparation is added to the supernatural power
residing in the dead man’s bone. When the bone had made
the wound, the dead man’s power, which had been brought by
incantations to the arrow, would make the wound fatal. The
preparation of burning juices mixed with charms, and smeared
1 The true Lepers’ Island arrow, liwue, is made with a broad white head
of human bone with jagged edges, nine or ten inches long, and without any
preparation in the way of poison; and they use also poisoned arrows made and
bought in Mae wo. To make the liwue the leg-bones of men of no particular
consideration are taken up out of their graves. Not long ago there was a
man in that island, who out of affection for his dead brother dug him up and
made arrows of his bones. With these lie went about speaking of himself as
‘ I and my brother; ’ all were afraid of him, for they believed that his dead
brother was at hand to help him.[CH.
310	Arts of Life.
upon the bone with charms, carries to the wound what is
itself like inflammation, and the ghost will make it inflame.
The treatment of the wounded man proceeds on the same
principle. If the arrow, or a part of it, has been retained, or
has been extracted with leaf poultices, it is kept in a damp place
or in cool leaves ; then the inflammation will be little and soon
subside. Shells, which have been made efficacious for the pur-
pose by charms, are kept rattling above the house where the
wounded man lies, to keep off the hostile ghost. In the same
way the man who has inflicted the wound has by no means
done all that he can do. He and his friends will drink hot
and burning juices, and chew irritating leaves ; pungent and
bitter herbs will be burnt to make an irritating smoke; a
bundle of leaves known to the shooter or bought from a wizard,
a qesis, will be tied upon the bow that sent the arrow, to secure
a fatal result; the arrow-head, if recovered, will be put into
the fire ; the bow will be kept near the fire to make the wound
it has inflicted hot, or, as in Lepers’ Island, will be put into a
cave haunted by a ghost; the bow-string will be kept taut
and occasionally pulled, to bring on tension of the nerves and
the spasms of tetanus to the wounded man.
The preparation of the poisoned arrows in Aurora, New
Hebrides, is thus described by a native writer: 1 When they
have dug up a dead man’s bone they break it into splinters
and cut it properly into shape, and sit down and rub it on a
stone of brain-coral with water. After that it is fixed into a
bit of tree-fern wood; everyone cannot do that, it is some one
who knows (the charms). When that is done, the thick juice
of no-lo (cxcsevaria agallocha) is put upon it. Then it is put
in a cool place on the side wall of a public hall, and no fire is
made there, so that the cold may strike upon it and it may
turn like mould. Then they dig up the root of a creeper they
call lold, and come back and strip off the bark and scrape the
inner fibre into a leaf; and that, wrapped in another leaf,
is put upon the fire. When it is cooked this is wrapped in
the web from the spatlie of a cocoa-nut, and squeezed into
a leaf of the nettle-tree. Then with a piece of stick theyXVI.]
Poisoned Arrows.
311
smear it on the point of bone to help the toto. After this it
is put again into a cool place, and it swells up in lumps, which
as it dries become smooth again. Then it is
fastened to the reed, and bound round with
fine string. After that they take a green
earth, which is only found in one place, and
paint it over1. When it has been painted,
they take it to the beach and dip it into the
sea-water till it becomes hard; then the toto
(poisoned arrow) is finished.’ In the neigh-
bouring island of Whitsuntide they finish
off with stuff found on rocks on the shore,
thought by them to be the dung of crabs, and
believed to have much magic power 2.
In Mota, in the Banks’ Islands, the poison
is made from the root of the climbing plant
loki, cooked over the fire with the juice of
pandanus root. This mixture is black and
thick, and is smeared on the points of human
bone, which are put in the sun to dry, and
then kept five days indoors wrapped up, when
the stuff turns white. Another mixture which
is thought to cause more inflammation and to
act more quickly is made with the juice of
toi, an euphorbia. The points of these arrows
1	I was once assured by a young naval officer that he
had seen putrid flesh upon the natives’ arrows. Asked
whether he had taken one into his hand to examine it, he
replied with disgust that he would not have the thing
near him. He probably to this day believes that he has the
witness of his own eyes to the truth of the common belief.
2	For the origin of these arrows at Maewo see the
story of Muesarava. The writer of that story adds,‘ And
this Maewo toto is exceedingly mana; if it hits any one
by chance, without beiDg shot at him, he dies. If it hits
any one like that they always take care of salt-water; any
one who has eaten what is salt cannot go near the house
where the man lies. And there is a filthy custom; if
any one has been with a woman he cannot possibly go
near; if he goes to-day, the man will die to-morrow.’
Shafts. Santa Maria.312
Arts of Life.
[CH.
are protected with caps, and the arrows themselves carried in a
quiver. The man in a rage who is ready to shoot pulls off the
caps and thrusts them into his hair, and grasps a number of
arrows in his bow hand. The shafts of these toto arrows are
most elaborately ornamented in Santa Maria. No arrows are
feathered.
At Santa Cruz the foreshaft is of palm wood, carved with
shark’s tooth or shell, and painted red and white. The
bone head is covered with
a preparation of vegetable
ashes, which gives great su-
pernatural power. The fore-
shaft is bound at intervals
with a string of fibre, which
is covered with the same
sort of preparation which
covers the bone point; and
this binding is no doubt
done with charms to fasten
supernatural qualities on the
arrow.
The common result of a
wound from any of these
arrows, whether ‘poisoned’
or of bare bone, is certainly
tetanus, which is expected.
Even if, however, the loki
be, as has been supposed,
some kind of strychnine,
it is well established that
disease. If it be asked how
the very common belief has arisen that these arrows are
poisoned with putrefying human flesh, if the preparation be
wholly vegetable as above described, I can but conjecture that
natives answered ‘ dead man ’ to early traders’ enquiries.
The native meant that the deadly qualities of the weapon
came from the dead man of whose bone the head was made;
Shell Adze. Torres Islands.
this is not the cause of theXVI.]
Tools and Implements.
3i3
the European, thinking of poison, not magic, supposed that
the poison was from a corpse. If it he asked again why, if
the arrows he not really poisoned, the natives are so much
afraid of them and careful not to touch them, it is enough to
say that they firmly believe that they are deadly, and that
this belief will outlast the belief in the power of the charms
with which they are made.
(5) Tools and Implements. Before the introduction of
metal, the adzes
with which most
of native work was
done were in some
islands of stone, in
some of shell. The
division is very
clear: the Solomon
islanders, except in
Rennell and Bel-
lona, use stone, and so do the New Hebrides
people; the Santa Cruz people, Torres islanders
and Banks’ islanders used shell, for adzes the
giant clam shell. The form of Florida stone
adzes and of the Santa Cruz shell adzes is
the same, roughly cylindrical, the cutting
edge being a segment of the circumference ;
the stone adzes of the Eastern Solomon
Islands and the New Hebrides, and the shell
adzes of the Banks’ Islands, have the same
general form, a long oval section, the flatfish
sides meeting to form the edge. The shell
adzes of Santa Cruz are beautifully finished,
those of the Banks’ Islands often very rough.
When iron was introduced the Banks’ Islands people, seeing it
in the form of hoop iron, were inclined to call it heaven-root,
gar tuka, supposing ships to come from beyond the horizon, and
to have brought some of the strong and hard base of the firma-
ment ; when axes were seen they settled into the use of the word
Shell Adze.
Santa Cklz.3H
[CH.
Arts of Life.
talai, elam shell, for iron. In Florida, Solomon Islands, a stone
adze was gild, the ira of San Cristoval, and whence they took
halo for iron is not explained. It is interesting to observe that
in Lepers’ Island, the stone adzes were called talai maeto, black
clam shell, a name now given to iron; the native adze was
evidently at first of shell, talai, and when stone was used the
old name was retained. They still use the til, a volute shell,
for working the inside of their canoes. Another shell, the
tire, was used in the Banks’ Islands for a chisel. The rapidity
with which the shell and stone implements give way to iron
is surprising. Santa Cruz was very little visited, almost un-
visited, ten years ago, and it was difficult to get any shell
specimens even five years ago. The crookedness and slight-
ness of the wooden handles used in the Solomon Islands is
surprising. For cutting threads, shaving, and fine carving,XVI.]
Implements. Stone-boiling.	315
obsidian, chert, and sharks’ teeth were used. The bamboo
knife has hardly been superseded by steel or iron; the edge
will not stand long, but while it stands it is far sharper than
a common steel knife in hands that know how to use it h
Pottery is unknown in the islands which are here in view,
being present in well-known forms in Fiji, and in ruder
unglazed dishes in Espiritu Santo. There may be room for
question whether the wide circular wooden dishes, tajria, of the
Banks’ Islands, and the deep wooden pots, popo, bought by
the Florida people from Guadalcanal carry with them any
reminiscence of fictile ware. The paltara, used to chop bread-
fruit open in the Banks’ Islands, is an interesting representation
in wood of the shell adze.
Stone-boiling, in Mota salo, was known all through the
islands, though not very much practised for cooking, at least
1 A saw is made in the Banks’ Islands by rolling up a strip of bamboo in a
spiral form. The name given to this implement, saosao, casts a doubt upon
its native origin.
Paltara. Mota.
Shell Adze. Mota.316
[CH.
Arts of Life.
in the Banks’ Islands, where the cream squeezed out from
grated cocoa-nut was often cooked over the embers in the
shells. The howls of the south-eastern Solomon Islands,
remarkable some of them for their enormous size, some for
their fantastic shape, all for their really beautiful orna-
mentation, represent stone-boiling in purpose if not often
in use. The oval wooden bowls, voumeto, of the Banks’
Islands sometimes stand on legs. The pestles in very active
use there for making mash, lot, in the broad wooden dishes
are wooden, sometimes ornamented with the figure of a bird
at the upper end, an almost solitary instance of carved figure
ornament on the implements of those people. It need hardly
be said that all Melanesian people are mat-makers ; the remark-
able thing is that in Santa Cruz alone is found a loom with
which beautiful mats are woven with the fibre of a banana
cultivated for the purpose; these looms are identical with
those in use in the Caroline and Philippine Islands and in
Borneo.
(6) Fulmuj. A large part of the subsistence of Melanesians
is generally and naturally derived from the sea, though the
character of the shore modifies the extent of fishing industry.
Something to eat with vegetable food is always looked for;
and shell-fish, octopus, and such things from the reefs are in
daily request. Fish are caught by angling from the shore
or from canoes, by nets, by shooting or spearing, in woven
pots, by poison, and with the use of torches at night. Hooks,
now generally superseded, were most commonly made of
tortoise-shell; in the Solomon Islands the hook common in
the Pacific was beautifully made ; a piece of mother-of-pearl,
with or without a wooden back, with a tortoise-shell hook
lashed to it, and a few beads on a short string, requiring no
bait. The very small fish-hooks of mother-of-pearl and tor-
toise-shell, of either material alone, or of some shell which
might imitate a bettle, at Savo, San Cristoval, Ulawa, were
among the prettiest and most skilful products of native
handiwork. The flying-fish is caught not with a hook, but
with a double prickle of tortoise-shell, or spines from palms.XVI.]
Fishing Implements.
3i 7
Santa Ckoz Float.
To fish for these from a canoe a very long and
light line is required; in Santa Cruz and the
Solomon Islands a
float is used, a short
stick, or wooden
shaft shaped like a
bird atop, weighted
with a stone, a
contrivance which
must also he known
in the Banks’ Is-
lands, since it has
a name,	wo-nto,
there1. The stitch
in netting is that
familiar in Europe,
and nets are made
extremely fine, and very large and strong. In the
Solomon Islands no mesh is used for a very large
net, but for a jng-net the loop is measured by
the knee, for a turtle-net by a man’s shoulders.
Nets, sometimes fifty feet square, are used as seines,
and are let down between stages in shoaling
water ; they are cast by the hand, or sunk by the
side of a canoe. An ingenious contrivance is where
a square net has its four corners kept apart by two
diagonal elastic rods, at the intersection of which
the line by which it is lowered is attached; when
1 With reference to the remarks of Dr. Hickson (Naturalist
in Celebes, p. 200) and Dr. Guppy (Solomon Islands, p. 151), it
should be observed that these floats are used to catch only
flying-fish, and that on account of their extreme shyness. In
the Solomon Island floats, on which the figure of a bird occurs,
the line is wound round the hollow of the bird’s back and a
projection below made for the purpose. For this the shape of
a bird is certainly convenient, and the genius of those people
leads them to ornamental forms. The Celebes floats seem
certainly to represent those of the Solomon Islands in a remark-
able and instructive way.
Malanta
Float.[CH.
318	Arts of Life.
a fish is seen above the net the line is hauled up, the ends of
the rods come together, and the net forms a bag containing
the fish. Fishing with a kite is practised in the Solomon
Islands and Santa Cruz; the kite is flown from a canoe, and
from it hangs a line with a tangle of spider’s web or of fibre,
which it drags along the water, and in which a fish with a
projecting under jaw entangles its teeth. In Lepers’ Island
small fish are caught in nets made of spider’s web; in the
Banks’ Islands they are driven by children into barricades
of dead coral. A singular method of catching sharks is
practised at San Cristoval, which is said to have been
borrowed from Santa Cruz; an outrigger canoe is used with
a bamboo stage on the outrigger; one man paddles the canoe,
another on the stage shakes cocoa-nut shells strung on a loop
of bamboo to attract a shark ; when a shark comes near, the
man substitutes a fish, and has a noose ready into which the
shark swims; when caught and hauled on to the stage the
shark is despatched with a club. This goes on some way out
from shore, to be clear of man-eating sharks, for those caught
in this w7ay are eaten. The dugong is taken, but rarely, at
the Bugotu end of Ysabel. The reef and lagoon between Ha
and Motlav is at times the scene of an exciting chase of fish,
when a shoal is driven into the shallow of the reef by a long
line of natives shouting and beating the water with their
hands. I have seen at Lakona in Santa Maria, and no doubt
the same thing is seen elsewhere, a large fish-trap in which
reed fences lead the fish as the tide retires into circular
enclosures from which they cannot retreat. Walls of stone
to shut back fish as the tide ebbs are common in the New
Hebrides. Fresh-water fish are abundant wherever there are
streams and lakes; some the natives recognise as peculiar to
fresh-water, some they say live also in the sea, sale rua Iasi; in
the mud of the irrigated gardens of Aurora an eatable fish is
found. Eels are abundant, but in some places are not eaten.
In the fas, the lake of Santa Maria, they are very large ; when
the water is low7 the natives dig pits by the margin of the
lake, and into these the eels find their way when the waterXVI.]
Food. Cooking.	319
rises; when it recedes again the eels are left behind and are
shot and speared. Names of rank are given to the very
largest eels, after the names of the Suqe; it is the fashion to
measure anything remarkable for size, and to hang up the
measuring line in the gamal; I have seen a measure of
thirty inches the circumference of an eel not of the highest
rank.
(7) Food and Cooking. The yam no doubt takes the highest
place as the staple food of Melanesians, though in some
places what is commonly known as taro, the esculent cala-
dium, is much more grown. The number of varieties of
yams in a single island has been noticed ; there is much dif-
ference also in the general character of the tuber in eastern
and western groups of islands, the Solomon Island yams
being round and compact, and of no great size, while in the
New Hebrides one at least has been measured by the height
of a man of more than six feet. A species with a prickly
vine, the tomago of the Banks’ Islands, mitopu of Santa Cruz,
pana of Florida, liana of San Cristoval, is very commonly
grown; and another prickly kind is sometimes cultivated,
which grows wild in the Banks’ Islands, the qauro, and is
eaten there grated and washed in sea-water when food is scarce.
The caladium is only called taro by the natives when they
think they are speaking English; there are many varieties
grown in dry ground on the hills, as well as in the skilfully
irrigated gardens of Aurora. The giant caladium, via alike in
the Banks’ Islands and Madagascar, is eaten in the New He-
brides and the Solomon Islands. Bananas supply much food
in numerous varieties ; in Lepers’ Island the fruit seems to he
eaten in larger proportion than elsewhere. The bread-fruit is
scarce in the Solomon Islands, most abundant perhaps at Mota
and the other Banks’ Islands, where it forms an important
part of the food supply when dried over a fire, wound round
with strips of leaves, as is done also in the Solomon Islands,
and preserved in chests. The making of anything like the
madrai of Fiji from fermented bread-fruit is not practised. In
the Banks’ Islands the pith of the sago-palm is washed into320
[CH.
Arts of Life.
starch in a trough of the stem, and cooked in cakes, but it
hardly ranks as an article of common food. In Santa Cruz it
has an important place ; sago pith cooked whole was the main
provision of canoes from Tikopia which visited the Banks’
Islands one year during my stay. Melanesian natives are
very fond of mashing yams, taro and bread-fruit, and eat the
puddings so made with sauce of the cream-like juice squeezed
out of scraped cocoa-nuts, and cooked by stone-boiling or in
the shells upon a slow fire. The leaves of an hibiscus like the
manihot and of many trees are cooked in the ovens. Tapioca
has been introduced. The nuts of the canarium have a very
important place in native cookery. Though a good deal of
cookery is done by roasting upon the fire such things as fish,
mash, eggs, wrapped in leaves and laid upon the embers, and
thin 3rams continually scraped and turned, all the substantial
meals are prepared in the native oven. There are differences
in detail, but the method generally is the same, and the
result admirable, the food being cooked by steam in its own
juices. The hole in the ground which forms the oven is
mostly permanent, with its heap of stones that will bear the
fire lying by it; the fire lighted in the hole which has been
lined with stones heats those and others heaped upon it;
when the fire has burnt down, these latter stones are taken
out with wooden tongs, the food wrapped in leaves is
arranged within, hot stones are laid between the larger
parcels, and the rest of the hot stones above all; the whole is
shut in with leaves, or may be covered in with earth ; water,
salt or fresh, is poured in to make steam, and every escape of
the steam is watched and closed. The process is lengthy, and
gives much of the day’s occupation to the native men, who
cook for themselves; it is a pity, perhaps also because it
takes less time, that the introduction of iron pots and sauce-
pans is changing the native cooking for the worse. A good
deal of care is taken about washing the hands before cooking,
and to eat panlepa, dirty-handed, is a discredit in the Banks’
Islands. Fire is produced by the stick and groove.
(8) Clothing. Bark-cloth, tapa, hammered out from theXVI.]
Dress.
321
bark of paper mulberry is made, but roughly, in Ysabel, and
worn in Florida; it was made till lately in Ulavva and San
Cristoval; a rough kind, made perhaps always from the bark
of banyan figs, is used in the New Hebrides. When such
cloth was in use the name of it, e.g. tivi in Ysabel and Florida,
nala in Ulawa, was ready for European cloth. In Aurora ga.vu,
and in the Banks’ Islands nearest to Aurora gagavu, is used for
cloth, no doubt identical with the Maori kahu and kakaliu.
In Mota the word siopa was applied at once to European
clothes, which, as the natives knew nothing of tapa, was sur-
prising. The native explanation is that the Tongans, who for
two years visited the Banks’ Islands and made a short settle-
ment on Qakea, were clothed with siopa. They have in fact
shifted the vowels in siapo, hiapo (the Maori hiako, bark), the
name of bark cloth in Tonga and Samoa. In Motlav, again,
the word malsam was applied to cloth, of which the first
syllable is no doubt the common malo of Fiji and elsewhere.
It was strange that among the people of the Banks’ Islands,
where the men were content to go without any covering at all,
the art of making a very handsome and elaborate dress was
known ; this was the malo saru, the malo put on over the head,
of variegated matting work in four pieces joining at the neck,
worn in dances by those of sufficient rank to do so. The art
expired some years ago with the last two men who practised
it. Two malo saru, probably the only existing examples, are in
the British Museum, one of which is shewn on page 108. To
all appearance the work, which much resembles that in the
Santa Cruz mats, must, like those, have been produced in a
kind of loom.
The dress of women varies remarkably, and does not vary
quite in accordance with the changes in the dress of men. In
Florida and its neighbourhood in the Solomon Islands, where
the male dress is scanty but perhaps sufficient, the women
have short petticoats of fibre. In the south-eastern Solomon
Islands the male attire is very scanty, and the women are
contented with a fringe. The men again at Santa Cruz are
amply clad in what may perhaps be called the dress of the
Y322
Arts of Life.	[ch.
Polynesian colonies, and the women wrap their bodies and
cover their heads with mats. In the Banks’ Islands the men
wore nothing, and the women had a little double band, pari,
ending in fringed tufts, of platted fibre, sometimes well orna-
mented with a crimson dye. In Lepers’ Island the dress
Bellona. Solomon Islands.
of the men is the same with that of Santa Cruz; the women
indoors wear the pari, and out of the house wrap themselves in
ample mats. But whereas the man’s dress is the same in
Pentecost as in Lepers’ Island, the petticoat of the women
again appears there, and continues southwards in the group.xvi.]	Money.	323
In Lepers’ Island a crimson dye is applied to mats through
a stencil of banana leaf.
(9) Money. There is some recognized medium of exchange
in all the islands now in view, but the shell currency of
the Banks’ Islands and of the Solomon Islands is perhaps
alone worthy of the name of money. It is probable that
the ornaments of the person most in vogue have every-
where a certain relative value, and pass in exchange for
food and other necessaries, and the general apparatus of
native life. Besides these there are products of industry
which are made for the single purpose of exchange, and
which may be called Mat-money, Feather-money, and Shell-
money. The Mat-money is in use in the Northern New
Hebrides, Aurora, Pentecost and Lepers’ Island. The mats
are long and narrow, made for no other purpose than to
represent value, and are in Aurora and Lepers’ Island valued
the more, the more ancient and black they are. Women
plait them ; either those of the family, or women hired for
the purpose. In Aurora the name is malo, the name of
the dress which is worn by some men there, as by all at
Lepers’ Island. The mats are kept in little houses specially
built for them, in which a fire is kept always burning to
blacken them ; when they hang with soot they are particularly
valued. Their value, however, is estimated by the number of
folds, which are counted in tens; a mat of twenty folds is
called double, one of thirty folds treble. Though these mats
will buy anything of sufficient value to equal a mat, they
are mostly used for buying the steps in the Suqe Club.
If a man wants to raise funds for this, he sends a pig
into a village where he knows mats are to be had, and
he receives mats less in value than his pig; when he can
repay the mats he recovers his pig. In Lepers’ Island
and in Pentecost these mats are called maraha. In the
latter island red ones, bioana, a word which in San Cristoval
means pandanus, are of most value ; in Lepers’ Island the
ancient and rotten ones which have long hung in the house
very choice, though the value still goes by the number
y 2
are324	Arts of Life.	[ch.
of folds. There are three lengths of mats in common use;
some mats are a hundred fathoms long, some when folded
ten fathoms ; the width is about two feet. A middle-
sized mat will buy a tusked pig. A rich man will keep
fifty mats and more in his house, hung up and decaying,
a proof of ancient wealth. Mat-money is also lent at interest,
and so becomes a source of wealth ; there is no fixed rate
of increase, the lender gets what he is able to insist upon,
up to a double return. In these three islands the discs
of shell, som, tom, are beautifully prepared and worked up
into armlets and necklaces, which are much valued, but there
is no use of them as money. Feather-money is peculiar to
Santa Cruz; it is made of the red feathers from under the
wings of a parrot, Triehoglossus Massena. The birds are
caught in the deep bush, where they are very tame, with
bird-lime smeared on a rod which a man carries in his hand,
and on which they perch; he must take care not to eat
anything hot or fat, or they will not come near him. The
small red feathers are first gummed on to pigeon’s feathers,
and these are bound on to a prepared foundation in rows,
so that only the red is seen. A length of this feather-money,
called tavau, about fifteen feet long, is coiled up and packed
with peculiar ornaments. Short pieces are made for con-
venience in arranging about prices. On festive occasions
the dancing ground, nava, fenced round with huge discs
of coral, is hung with the uncoiled feather-money of those
who make the feast. The people say that formerly they
had also shell-money. Though this feather-money is peculiar
to Santa Cruz, there is in the Banks’ Islands, in Santa
Maria and Meralava, where the row, shells are not found,
a medium of exchange of the same character. The little
feathers near the e}re of fowls are bound on strings, and
generally dyed a fine crimson; these are used as neck-
laces or anklets, by way of ornament and distinction {hole
weiapup, p. no), but also pass very much in the way of
money. A braid not unlike this was formerly used in the
Loyalty Islands as a medium of exchange, the red fur underXVI.]
325
Money.
the ears of the flying-fox being used in the same way as the
feathers. Shell-money in the Solomon Islands and the Banks’
Islands differs widely in one respect; in the former it is
in some places carefully and evenly made, and is of two
sorts of less and greater relative value 1, while in the latter
it is all alike rough and unfinished, only quantity being
cared for ; but in the Banks’ Islands the character of money
is more clearly marked, and money-dealing surprisingly
developed. In the Solomon Islands, porpoise teeth in San
Cristoval and Malanta, dogs’ teeth in Florida and Ysabel,
are current with a tolerably fixed value ; of the dogs’ teeth
only that immediately behind the canines is valued, and these
to be worth much must be very white and sound2. The
shell-money used in Florida and at Saa is made at Alite,
and is taken in exchange mostly for pigs. The discs are
carefully and accurately made from certain shells broken and
rubbed into shape, the holes for stringing being drilled
with a pump-drill, in Florida puputa, in San Cristoval nono,
armed with a point of flint or obsidian. These discs are
used for ornaments as well as money. The money is either
white, turombuto, or red, rongo ; all is generally called rongo,
and there does not appear to be a definite proportion of value
between the twTo kinds. Six coils, about ten fathoms, is
called a rongo, and ten rongo of red or white is an isa.
Anything can be bought with shell-money; and the money
is lent, but without interest. In this last particular the
Banks’ islanders are so advanced that it is hard to believe
them in other ways so much uncivilized. The material is
rude enough, but the forms and terms of money-lending
are most elaborate. To make the money, the body of a
shell, som, is broken, and the tip rubbed on a stone by means
of a pointed stick inserted in the broken end till the inner
1	The Florida money is smoothly finished ; that used in Ysabel and Ulawa
is much more rough; a very small and finely-finished kind of great value is
made at Haununu in San Cristoval; about 50 discs of this, TV of an inch in
diameter, can be strung upon an inch of thread.
2	In Florida I dog’s tooth is equal in value to 5 porpoise teeth ; in San
Cristoval 1 dog’s is worth 1 or 2 porpoise’s, according to quality.326	Arts of Life.	[ch.
•
hollow of the shell is reached ; into the hole thus appearing
at the tip of the shell the stick is then inserted, and the
broken base ground smooth on the stone. There is thus
a shell used for each disc, and no drill is needed, as indeed
none is known. The shell discs are strung upon a slender
strip of the bark of a hibiscus. The shell-money, som, thus
made is good for any kind of purchase, but the great use
of it is in buying steps in the Suqe Club. The som is
arranged and counted in coils ; two sticks are fixed in the
ground and the som is wound, siga, upon them; a turn from
the one stick and back again is tal; ten rounds, tal sangavul,
is a hank or coil, qatagiu; when the quantity is less than
the qatagiu it is counted as so many tal. The full length
of the turn is a full fathom, the measure of a man’s arms
stretched out, rova togtogoa ; if a smaller measure is used the
qatagiu is named accordingly. Rich men accumulate large
quantities of this money; a hundred qatagiu, however, is
enough to make a man rich. Accumulation results from
the system of the Suqe and Tamate Clubs above described
(chapters v, vi), and also from the practice of money-lending ;
but according to native ideas the unseen spiritual influence
called mana was the cause of wealth. The rate of interest
is cent, per cent, without regard to time. A man borrows,
avu, and the owner lends, taive; a debt, pug, is thus
established. A debt is not only contracted by borrowing,
but a rich man upon occasion imposes a loan, which his
friend for his own credit is bound to accept, and to dis-
charge with a double return. The pressure put on a debtor
who does not pay when payment is demanded is admirably
effective. All the men of the creditor’s place come and sit,
bringing their wives with them, in the debtor’s premises ;
the debtor lights his fire and cooks food for them ; if the pay-
ment is not forthcoming they stay over night, go home next
morning, and after a while repeat the visit. The debtor’s
neighbours and friends pity him and help him with food and
money, till he scrapes enough together to pay the debt.
A man borrowing money of a friend to pay a debt asks himxvi.]	Money.	327
to shield him, ti fforo, to stand between him and his creditor.
If a man borrows money and lends that again to another,
he is said to twl the lender, to treat him unfairly; if a man
uses money he has borrowed of one man to satisfy another
creditor, he is said to divert the payment, viro goro, into
another course. When a man borrows, say ten strings of
money, from another, he will make the creditor his debtor
also, by lending him say four strings of his own money;
this smaller loan is called a tano ravrav, a drawing-place,
and to make it is said to put down rollers in the way as if
to draw up a canoe, lango goro, because it is thought to make
the transaction more easy for the borrower, who becomes the
creditor of his creditor, and cannot so well be dunned by him.
To pay a debt is to close it up, wono. Money transactions
play a great part in native life : social advance is secured
by possession of shell-money, because the steps in the Suqe
Club cannot be taken without it ; social eminence is main-
tained by it, because the moneyed man has his debtors under
his thumb, and by the power he has of imposing a loan he
can make rising men his debtors and keep them back.
By the Suqe institution money was kept in continual cir-
culation, alike in large and small quantities. The little
reef island of Row a supplies common money, and also the
finer sort, which is used only as ornament. This is sometimes
extremely small and finely made, and with it, before the
introduction of beads, was sometimes strung a bit of remark-
able stone or a concretion from some shell h In the Torres
Islands, where the material for shell-money is absent, they
now buy with beads, which indeed have in the Banks’
Islands to some extent superseded money for small purchases ;
formerly their very pretty arrows were used in the way of
1 The discs of Banks’ Island money, which differs little in size from that of
the Solomon Islands, are about £ of an inch in diameter. The length of ten
upon the string is about an inch. The fine som ta Rcnoa is not more than
of an inch in diameter, and as many as 60 discs go on an inch of string. A
puto lalcai, rough pearl from a giant clam, when bored with a rat’s tooth for
stringing, will buy a large pig.328
Arts of Life.
[CH.
money, and in a lesser degree mats, and boars’ tusks ; the
head of the peculiar pig rawe, with its tusks, is still very
valuable there.
Lime-box. Ysabel.
(10) Decorative Arts. There appear to be four distinct
groups into which the languages of the Melanesian islands
Pattern on Cocoa-nut Water-bottle. Ysabel.
here in view naturally fall; and each of these groups has a
distinctive style of decoration. The Western and EasternOrnamentation.
329

XVI.]	.............
Solomon Islands must be divided into two groups; San
Cristoval, Ulawa, and Eastern Malanta have their own style
of art. Santa Cruz stands per-
fectly distinct; the Banks’ Is-
lands and the Northern New
Hebrides must go together.
1. Beginning in the west, if
there be anything distinctive it
may be found in such ornament
as appears on the lime-boxes of
Ysabel. But there is and has
been so much intercourse with
islands further west that the
style of New Britain ornament
is represented in the paddles,
for example, of Bugotu. The
beautifully made and orna-
mented shields and clubs which
have been common at Florida
were made in Guadalcanar ; the
discs of clam-shell covered with
a plate of tortoise-shell cut into
an open-work pattern belong to
all these islands to the west.
Patterns of lines and circles in
tattooing or incised on cocoa-nut
bottles are also characteristic.
2. The carvings, paintings and
representations of scenes of
native life executed in San Cris-
toval and its neighbourhood have
been mentioned. Drawings by
native boys, such as those on
pages 196, 259, would not be
found in other islands. The
decoration and fantastic shapes
of bowls cannot fail to strike
Banks’ Island Ear-ornament.,330
[CH.
Arts of Life.
attention ; the nautilus-shell inlay on bottles, cups, spoons, is
really excellent. The artistic faculty of these people is
remarkable. From Malanta come combs which shew extra-
ordinary beauty of decoration as well as neatness of make;
but they are the work of the inland people rather than of
those whose skill is shewn in the ornamentation of canoes and
canoe-houses. 3. The change of character in decoration when
Ornament. Aurora Island.
Santa Cruz is reached is unmistakeable. The
ornamental bands in the mats shew perhaps
nothing distinctive ; but while the fancy of the
natives shews itself in the shapes into which
their bowls and pillows are carved, there is a
fixed determination of painted ornament to
lines, crosses, and stars of black and red upon a
white ground. Their love of turmeric as a dye
for ornamented bags connects them with the
Polynesian colonies, such as that in Mae in the
New Hebrides. They stand alone in their love
of tags and loose ends by way of ornament. 4. In the Banks’
Islands and New Hebrides mats, baskets, bags are skilfully
made and well ornamented; the decoration of reeds, as the
shafts of arrows (page 311), and ear-ornaments with incised
line patterns, is characteristic. It is remarkable that there is
a style of pattern belonging to each island or neighbourhood ;
in a handful of ear-ornaments, natives can pick out each oneXVI.]
Ornamentation.
331
and determine with certainty where it was made. In the
patterns of tattooing, where it is used in these groups, and
in the stencilled figures used on the mats in the New Hebrides,
the character of the ornamentation shewn in the ear-orna-
ments is reproduced; just as tattoo on the cheeks of the
women of the Florida neighbourhood follows the pattern
incised on the cocoa-nut bottles.
With this conventional character of the ornament of each
group or region there appears also upon occasion a remark-
able freedom of ornamentation. The part of an ornamented
walking-stick here shown was cut with a common knife in
Norfolk Island by a native of Aurora, who was not at all
aware that he was executing a work of art. A comparison of
the graceful foliage ornamentation incised on the back of a
nut-shell used as a casket with the lined pattern on the cocoa-
nut bottle above, shews again an unexpected freedom in the
art of Ysabel.CHAPTER XVII.
DANCES. MUSIC. GAMES.
(i) Dances. It may be confidently asserted that in the
Melanesian islands here in view dances have absolutely no
religious or superstitious character, although visitors find
‘ devil dances ’ and ‘ devil grounds ’ enough. Men and women
always dance apart; the songs which accompany the dances
are undoubtedly some of them indecent, and I would by no
means deny that there are indecent dances, though I never
heard of them. There might be thought to be a superstitious
character in those dances in which the performers are sup-
posed to be ‘ ghosts,’ if it were not that ghosts were believed
to amuse themselves with dancing as well as men ; it might
be thought that when the members of tamale ghost clubs
dance in masks representing birds or fish they are dancing in
honour of what may be called their totems, if there were the
least reason to believe that the emblems of the clubs had any
character of the sort. An Ambrvm drum set up when a
death-feast is celebrated, and carved into a representation of a
face, is no doubt meant to represent the deceased, so that it
may be said that dances are performed before the images of
ancestors, and the deceased may be called either 1 god ’ or
‘devil,’ according to the terms employed; but after all it is
but a festival in memory of some lately dead member of the
community, and the dancing and drumming are parts of the
festivity. Women’s dances are everywhere ungraceful and
uninteresting ; in the rorohi of Florida they sway their bodiesDances.
333
and stamp their feet in a circle; in the lenga of the Banks’
Islands they stamp, and scream a song. In a Banks’ Island
feast while the men sing and dance round the drum, the
women, two and two, with the arms of each over the other’s
neck, tramp round the dancing-ground with short heavy
steps, shaking as they go. The most graceful men’s dance
I have seen is one in which in San Cristoval and Saa per-
formers wave dancing clubs as they represent fighting scenes,
with the accompaniment of a very soft and tuneful song. The
general term for men’s dancing in Florida is garni; in the
silane they sit as if paddling; in the hauhamumu there is a
concert of many bamboo pipes blown in certain tunes,
without a song; this is a performance learnt by men from
ghosts, and brought over from Laudari in Guadalcanal-.
Parties of men practise these dances till they are perfect,
and then start on a voyag’e about the neighbouring islands,
going a-dancing, gavai Iona, exhibiting their performance
everywhere, and receiving hospitality and handsome presents
wherever they go. After the return of such a party they will
divide from two to five hundred rongo, a large sum of money,
among them. In Santa Cruz every great man has near
his house his dancing-ground, nava, fenced with huge discs
of coral; the great aim in dancing is to stamp the feet all
together with the utmost exactness and the loudest shock.
Many of the Banks’ Island dances, in elaborate figures carried
out with the greatest precision, are really beautiful and inter-
esting ; the performers, with their heads wonderfully adorned,
and their limbs decorated with shining fringes of unopened
palm-fronds, advance and retire in two lines, interlace in curves,
cross and recross in ranks, waving their arms and stamping
their feet, on which rattling anklets of empty nuts are hung,
to the beat of a bamboo drum carried by a leader, or beaten
by a seated performer. To keep them right in their steps
they repeat to themselves the words of the song belonging
to the dance. In Maewo, Aurora, clapping of hands plays a
great part in common dancing and singing. In Lepers’
Island, when a hundred or more men dance and sing round a334
Dances. Music. Games.
[ch.
drum or drums in a hue, ‘ the earth shakes under their feet,
and the land resounds about them ; ’ and indeed it is no
wonder that such dances give excitement and delight. The
favourite time for dancing is a moonlight night, if the dance
is the chief thing in view ; the dancing and drumming of the
common feast goes on in daytime.
(2) Songs. Words fitted to music are the songs and poetry
of the people; the character of the tunes differing more in
the various groups and islands than the general character of
the words. There is no conception of poetry without a
tune, though tunes without words are not unknown. In
songs certain words or forms of expression, which are not.
used in common speech, are everywhere thought poetical and
appropriate, and words are lengthened or shortened to fit.
what, must be called the metre. In the Banks' Islands the
use of a distinct song-dialect is very remarkable, in which not
only are words used which are never used in speech, some
probably archaic and some borrowed from a neighbouring
island, and not only are words contracted or prolonged to suit
the tune, but in each island the song-language is so different
from that of ordinary speech that the two have the appear-
ance of two dialects, as completely as in the Dialogue and
Chorus of a Greek play. The difference is least conspicuous
in Gaua, Santa Maria, most conspicuous probably in Mota.
On one side of Mota songs are composed in something like
the language of Gaua, on the other in something like that of
Motlav; yet the language of no Mota song is the spoken
language of Gaua or Motlav, nor is a Mota song quite in the
song-dialect of Gaua or Motlav. Every one of the Banks’
Islands has at least one form of speech for songs and another
for common use, while some, like Mota, are not content with
two. In Santa Maria, however, while the spoken language
of Lakona is very different from that of Gaua, the songs are
almost if not quite the same. A poet or poetess more or less
distinguished is probably found in every considerable village
throughout the islands ; when some remarkable event occurs,
the launching of a canoe, a visit of strangers, or a feast, song-XVII.]
335
Songs.
makers are engaged to celebrate it and rewarded, or the
occasion produces a song for which, in the Banks’ Islands at
any rate, a complimentary present is made. In Florida a
song is linge; a song about some one, in honour of him, is his
song, na lingena ; in the Banks’ Islands a song is as, and is
called the song of the person celebrated, na asina ; to compose
a song in Florida is to fit it, kanggea na linge, in Mota it
is to measure it, toivo as. New words are thus fitted to old
tunes, but new tunes are invented, as well as old ones
modified. In the Banks’ Islands a song has certain regular
successive parts with distinctive names, each introduced by a
vocalic prelude which marks the qau-as, the knee, or turn, of
the song. Some songs are led off by a single voice, we put,
some begin with many voices together, we saru; sometimes
the party of singers is divided, some start the song, ive tin,
the rest follow with an answering part, we sarav goro. Songs
are no doubt often indecent and obscene, but there are many
which are perfectly harmless, some pretty in tune and words,
some in which poetry may be recognized, though much is
conventional. The following song is surely not devoid of
poetry, and might be so translated as to give a very favour-
able impression of native powers. It was composed at
Lakona, in Santa Maria, in honour of Maros in his absence at
sea, whose song it therefore is, and who speaks in the exor-
dium. ‘ Leale! ale! I am an eagle, I have soared to the
furthest dim horizon. I am an eagle, I have flown and
lighted at Mota. I have sailed with whirring noise round
the mountain. I have gone down island after island in the
West to the base of heaven. I have sailed, I have seen the
lands. I have sailed in circles, I have been strongly set. An
ill wind has drifted me away, has drawn me away from you
two. How shall I make my way round to you two? The
sounding sea stretches empty to keep me away from you.
You, Mother, you are crying for me, how shall I see your
face? You, Father, are crying for me, how shall I see your
face? I only long for you, and weep; it is irksome to me; I
go about as an orphan, I alone, and who is my companion ?336	Dances. Music. Games.	[ch.
Roulsulwar (his little daughter), you are crying after me
without the house.’ (Repeat this first part ; then the poet
speaks to Maros.) 1 Youths 1 My friend, you have lingered ;
I have lingered over your song. I have measured it, and
lengthened out my voice, the sound of it has spread down
hither to mv place. Ask, hear ; who was it that measured
the song of Maros? It was the song-measurer who sits by
the way to Lakona.’ Repeat the last part. The songs of
Aurora strike visitors as more musical than most. The
following is a translation of a song used in flying a kite in
Lepers’ Island. ‘ Wind ! wherever you may abide, wherever
you may abide, Wind ! come hither ; pray take my kite away
from me afar. E-u! E-u! Wind ! blow strong and steady,
blow' and come forth, O Wind! ’
(3) Musical Instruments. The drum, in many forms, may be
said to be the characteristic instrument of Melanesia, yet
there seems to be no use of such a thing in Florida, and
perhaps no knowledge of a native drum in Santa Cruz. The
common form of drum is represented by a joint of bamboo
with an open longitudinal slit; this may be seen in various
sizes from the largest to small bamboos, and is followed in
the form of the drums which are made of logs of trees. In
these the trunk of a tree of a suitable kind and size is hollowed
from a long and narrow opening at the side, the lip of which,
cut thin, receives the beat of the drum-sticks. These drums
are very resonant and well toned, and can be heard at a
great distance. The skill of the drummers and the pieces
they perform are not contemptible, when two or even three
performers sit down to one drum and play some piece of
native drum-music in the Banks’ Islands, or when three
drums of different size and tone, as I have heard at Saa, are
played together with surprising precision and variety. At
Saa and in San Cristoval there are large houses for the drums ;
the story of the settlement at Saa (page 49) shews how good
drums are valued. In the Banks’ Islands a drum is /core, in
Lepers’ Island singsing; a large singsing, and some are very
large, has a handle left in the wood when the end is squaredXVII.]
Musical Instruments.
*2 n >-]
35/
to help in moving it, and has a little house built over it to
keep it from sun and weather. In all these islands the drums
lie horizontally upon the ground, but in Ambrvm and the
Southern New Hebrides they stand erect, the butt buried in
the earth and the tapering top shaped into a face. The
bamboo drums if large are
held by an assistant as the
performer heats, small ones
can be carried in a dancer’s
hand. Such instruments
as these are no doubt im-
properly called drums. I
have seen the hollow trunk
of a tree-fern set up in the
ground, and a mat tied
over it to form a drum-
head, beaten with the fists,
and also a thin broad slab
of wood, probably cut from
the buttress of a tree, laid
over a hole dug in the
ground and struck with a
rammer; these, however
rude, may he called true
drums. Panpipes, v'ujo in
Mota, galevu in Florida,
luemlalambala if of seven
or eight pipes, nggovi if
of three, in Lepers’ Island,
are common; it is the
proper thing in some places to assist the instrument with a
vocal sound. Some galevu have a double row of pipes, one of
each pair open at the bottom, the other closed. Single
bamboo pipes are blown in the Florida hauhamumu dance,
two with each performer, or one of the largest size; with
these certain tunes, which have each their names, are played
in concert with considerable musical effect. The reed, or
z33§
Dances. Music. Games,
[CH,
FLORIDA GALEVU.
(The treble and bass, with other notes between occasionally thrown in:
written down by Mr. G. Bailey of Norfolk Island.)
P=w3=filp:
r~r

rrrr
S - g - S -S s
ESSE
tzkz
:EgE
-


T“ ,
gEE^EjEJEiEFSe
t r
—1Z^^=E|ESg=gg|: r^ZEE^zrgEj
Tfc*	3	ZJ=	—h*—~	1 —		1—										
											
											
											
t/ WTS-^-f			:: : :		fEiE^	•	H	p-	:: :			Si
5^5 p		M=]										*3
3^	P	±=:£	=1	z±z	r , . -p——|	—j -■ p-r		p—p"~-
t	•> t •> j s * * f S	J=^_-._gZ= F=i-E-f	J=® ? ? S	fIses-e	-i3- -r -p
	-F—F=		=P—F--	
	a—p—				p-—r-—^]	„	—•	p	1*—
2	P=S=S=*=		§; r		ii f %	f==t= E=; F&—S S£	fS=g—Sp
	—!	1				^ 1=1			-^-f=r-	
^flTP=p-g=	-r—p1—f—i-	=1	*		—		1		*=|_	—1—m	1—:—i	_ U
^ S S'	-!—J-—i—t -S—B 2	-^2—i=5C: -g—g —g—n		-g ■:--		
p-p-		B g—iS~ '1	t 1—			:Je	s±siE=iXVII.]
Musical Instruments.
339
bamboo, pipes of the Banks’ Islands, wegore, produce a plaintive
little music. The corresponding nggore of Lepers’ Island is
longer, some three feet, and has four holes, so that native
songs can be played. The ioa.ru, double flute, of the same
island consists of two lengths of slender bamboo with the
knot between them ; on either side of the knot on the upper
side is a hole, and at both ends two holes above and below.
When the instrument is played the knot with its two holes
goes into the performer’s mouth, his outstretched hands
support the bamboo, and he modulates the sound with his
fingers and thumbs on the holes at the ends. The bamboo
used is not more than two-thirds of an inch in diameter, for
a strong sound is not liked ; the music of the warn, is ‘excellent
to hear ’ in native ears. In the Solomon Islands the bamboo
jew’s-harp, the nene of Florida, is common, which is unknown
in the Eastern Islands. A stringed instrument is known in
the Solomon Islands, the tcalove of Florida. It is made of a
piece of bent reed or bamboo a foot long and of half an inch
diameter. From end to end of this two strings are stretched,
passing over little bridges which are pushed up towards the
end to tighten them; the strings are tuned to one note.
The performer holds the curved back of the instrument in his
mouth, and strikes the strings with a little plectrum of reed
held in his right hand ; with the lingers of his left hand he
holds the tcalove so that he keeps one of the'strings per-
manently stopped, and to produce higher notes can stop the
free string as the tune requires it. The music thus produced
is not very audible to any one but the performer, to whom it
gives great delight. Among musical instruments must be
included the castanets, of shells of nuts and seeds, worn upon
the ankles in dancing, upon the wrists, and, as in Santa Cruz,
hung upon dancing-clubs, for these are important accessories,
especially in a stamping dance such as the Banks’ Island gal.
In the preparation for a feast in San Cristoval men sit
together to scrape the cocoa-nuts \ and as they scrape follow
1 To scrape the nut conveniently they use a seat like a quadruped, the body
and head being the trunk of a small tree and the legs four branches; the head340
Dances. Music. Games.
[CH.
the song they sing with the motion of their hands, rattling the
castanets on their wrists together with admirable precision and
variety to beguile their task. In the Banks? Islands, to add
to the din of the multitude of drums big and little at a feast,
I have seen a man shaking dry shells from the beach in a
bag of matting. In Aurora they fasten bamboo rods pierced
with holes to the tops of trees, and so contrive an iEolian
flute, such as those mentioned by Dr. Tylor in his ‘ Early
History of Mankind.’
(4) Games. A game which belongs to the Banks’Islands and
New Hebrides is iika, the Fiji tiqa, played with reeds dashed in
such a manner upon the ground that they rise in the air and fly
to a considerable distance. In some islands, as Santa Maria, a
string is used to give impetus,and in some the reed is thrown also
from the foot. The game is played by two parties, who count
pigs for the furthest easts, the number of pigs counted as
gained depending on the number of knots in the winning ti/ca.
There is a proper season for the game, that in which the yams
are dug, the reeds on which the yam vines had been trained
having apparently served originally for the iika. When two
villages engage in a match they sometimes come to blows.
There are marks on the tiqa to shew to whom they belonged.
It is remarkable that in Mota a decimal set of numerals is
used in this game, distinct from the quinary set used on every
other occasion of counting; in Florida also there are numerals
used in a game, but only the common numerals in an altered
form. In the Banks’ Islands boys play at hide-and-seek,
rurqonaqona ; there are two sides, and if the boy who is hiding
is not found by the seekers, he suddenly jumps up and counts
a pig against them. There is also a kind of prisoners’ base,
tuqiiaqjau ; each party has a cooking-place, mil, in which they
are safe, and outside which they may be caught. In Lepers’
Island they have football, played by men and boys in twTo
sides between two fences, with a native orange, bread-fruit, or
cocoa-nut; the goal is gained when the ball is driven out at
is armed with a shell scraper. In the Museum at Batavia is a similar seat
with the tail of a horse, and the scraper of iron.XVII.]
Games.
34i
either end from between the fences; a pig’ is counted for each
goal. In the same island in waliweli tambagau two parties sit
opposite to one another in the moonlight; a man or hoy from
one side comes forward holding- the door-shutter of a house,
tambagau, before him, and the other side g-uess who he is and
call his name; if they fail a pig is counted against them ; if
they succeed one of their party takes the door. The women
play the same among themselves. They have also a game
like hunt-the-slipper, and play at hiding canarium almonds,
counting pigs in success. Cat’s-cradle, in Lepers’ Island le/egaro,
in Florida honggo, with many figures, is common throughout
the islands. I have seen in Florida a game in which two
parties of hoys tossed backwards and forwards a rough ball on
the points of sticks, the object being to keep it from the
ground as long as possible. In the Solomon Islands the great
game is throwing and dodging spears, or sticks instead of
spears. This is to some extent represented in the Banks’
Islands by two parties throwing native oranges at each other.
At Lab on a they used in a friendly way to resort to the sarevnate,
the shooting’-ground, and practise at one another with their
bows and arrows. In the Banks’ Islands and Torres Islands,
and no doubt in other groups, they use the surf-hoard, tapa.
In Mota, taptapui is racing to get first to a certain object;
tititiro is throwing at a tree or some other mark. Archery is
practised with banana trunks set up as targets. Counting is
made into a kind of game ; in the Banks’ Islands strokes are
arranged on the sand, or on a board, in a certain figure
representing numbers, and these are counted with the finger
accompanied by a whistled tune; something of the same kind
is done in Florida, sticking fingers into the sand in number
according to a counting song brought from Alite. Boys
sitting together in a narrow ring toss from side to side another
who stands among them, and holds himself as stiffly as he can,
so that he is thrown like a log of wood. Children in the
Banks’ Islands, when a rainbow is seen, play at cutting off its
end, toto gasiosio; if they can cut it short there will he no more
rain. There is in the Banks’ Islands a certain approach to342
Dances. Music. Games.
acting; a man will imitate the voice anrl gestures of another,
the gait of a cripple, the fury of a man in a rage, or will
pretend to be a woman, for the amusement of a crowd.
(5) Toys. Kites, used in lishing in the Solomon Islands
and Santa Cruz, are used as toys in the Banks’ Islands and New
Hebrides, though not commonly of late years. They have their
season, being made and flown when the gardens are being
cleared for planting. The kite is steadied by a long reed tail,
and a good one will fly and hover very well. The name is in
the Banks’ Islands cm, in Lepers’ Island mala, an eagle. The
use of the bull-roarer, buro, in the Mysteries at Florida, has
been mentioned. It is there only that any superstitious
character belongs to it. There is no mystery about it when
it is used in the Banks’ Islands to drive away a ghost, as
in Mota, where it is called nanamatea, death-maker, or to
make a mourning sound, as in Merlav, where it is called wo-
rvng-tamb, a wailer, and used the night after a death. It
is a common plaything; in Vanua Lava they call it mala,
a pig, from the noise it makes; in Maewo it is tal-viv, a
whirring string ; in Araga it is merely tavire lua, a bit of
bamboo. Battles are merely toys; in the Banks’ Islands
the dry seed-pods of a cassia are tied in a row between two
strips of bamboo. In the same group the name of a toy,
lajdagolaijo, has been adopted for the English wheel, and after
that for any wheeled vehicle or machine. Children used to
make a broad hoop of a sago frond, and set it running down
hill, with the cry taplagolago\ ‘it runs of itself!’ Tops are
made in the Solomon Islands of the nut of a palm and a pin
of wood, the whole visible length of which, between two and
three inches long, is below the head. To spin the top a
doubled string is wound round the shaft, and the two ends
are pulled smartly asunder. A similar top was used in Pitcairn
Island by the half Tahitian children of the Bounty Mutineers.
Whistling was hardly in native use as a way of producing a
tune, though a song might he whistled without words. In
the Banks’ Islands there is a way of whistling a man’s name
to call him, icoswos-lcglog.CHAPTER XVIII.
MISCELLANEOUS.
(i) Cannibalism. It may be safety asserted that in the
Banks’ Islands and Santa Cruz there has been no cannibalism,
though the natives were not ignorant of the practice of it by
others. When some fifty years ago a party of men from
Tonga, as it is remembered, left the little island of Qakea, on
which they had for a short time settled, the proofs that they
had eaten those whom they had killed in the fighting1 which
preceded their departure caused such horror and rage against
them that a party returning a year after to the same place
was immediately attacked. In the Solomon Islands it is
strange that the practice has recently extended itself. It is
asserted by the elder natives of Florida that man’s flesh was
never eaten except in sacrifice, and that the sacrificing of men
is an introduction of late times from further west. The coast
people of Bugotu say the same of themselves; but they freely
accuse the inland people of the same island, with whom they
have a good deal of free intercourse, and whose speech is not
very different from their own, of being cannibals, and of killing
men for the sake of eating them. A few years ago one Nunu,
an inland chief, was believed to say that pig's flesh was bad
and man’s flesh sweet to him ; a man who had mounted to his
place and found himself in a sweat would sit down to cool
before he showed himself; Nunu took the sweat as a sign of
fatness, and would desire to eat him. In Ulawa, again, there344
Miscellaneous.
[ch.
is no eating' of men; it is thought that the lid1 a, the ghosts of
power, do not like it; and at Saa it was not the old custom of
the place, the elder men even now will have nothing to do
with it. The younger men have taken to it, and eat the
bodies of men killed in battle; they have followed the
custom of men from the eastern coast who have lived with
them, and of the Bauro men of San Cristoval whom they
have visited. The natives of San Cristoval not only eat the
bodies of those who are slain in battle, but sell the flesh.
To kill for the purpose of eating human flesh, though not
unknown, is rare, and is a thing which marks the man who
has done it. This is a subject on which stories which come
from traders are not very trustworthy. In the Northern
New Hebrides there is no doubt cannibalism. I know
nothing about it in Aurora, but have been told by an
eye-witness of what is done in Pentecost. After a bitter
fight they would take a slain enemy and eat him, as a sign of
rage and indignation; they would cook him in an oven, and
each would eat a bit of him, women and children too. When
there was a less bitter feeling, the flesh of a dead enemy was
taken away by the conquerors to be cooked and given to their
friends. In the neighbouring islands, and at the back of
his own island, said my informant, they kill for the sake of
eating. In Lepers’ Island they still eat men. It was not the
common fashion, however, to cat enemies killed in fair fight-
ing, it was a murderer or particularly detested enemy who was
eaten, in anger, and to treat him ill; such a one was cooked
like a pig, and men, elder women and boys ate him. The
boys were afraid, but were made to do it. It is the feeling
there that to eat human flesh is a dreadful thing, a man-
eater is one afraid of nothing; on this ground men will buy
flesh when some one has been killed, that they may get the
name of valiant men by eating it. A certain man in Lepers’
Island mourned many days for his son, and would not eat till
he bought a piece of human flesh for himself and his re-
maining boy ; it was a horrid thing to do, appropriate to his
gloomy grief.XVIII.]
345
Heads. Castaways.
(2) Heads. Head-hunting1 is not practised by any of the
natives eastwards from Ysabel; that is to say, they do not
make expeditions for the sole purpose of obtaining1 heads. In
Bugotu, the south-eastern extremity of Ysabel, the people have
suffered and still suffer most seriously from the attacks of the
head-hunters from beyond, whose expeditions, following the
coasts from a great distance, and sometimes for months, have
reached Malanta and Guadalcanal in one most disgraceful
instance the head-hunters being brought to Florida in an
European vessel. The practice, however, of taking heads and
preserving them as signs of power and success belongs to the
Solomon Islands generally. The heads of enemies killed in
fight arc preserved as trophies, and set out on stages as in
Florida, or hung up under the caves of the canoe-house as in
San Cristoval. When a chief in the exercise of his authority
had a man killed for an offence, or had him murdered out of
revenge or hatred, or for a sacrifice, ho added the head to his
collection ; it was a sign of his power and greatness. Hence,
as the more heads he could show the more his power was in
view, he was ready on every opportunity and on any pretext
to take a life and a head. When a chief had a man killed, he
would keep the head, but sent the legs and arms to his neigh-
bours, to shew what he had done. If, for example, an accused
man got away from Mboli in Florida to Savo, the Mboli chief
would send a request, backed by a present of money, to the
Savo chief to have him killed ; the Savo chief would keep
the head and send a leg or arm to Florida, where the chief
would hang it up to shew his power. The heads thus taken
and preserved are distinct from those of deceased relatives,
which are kept as memorials of affection. Skulls may be
seen suspended equally at the entrance of a Solomon Island
oh a and a New Hebrides cjamal, but the signification is, in
all cases probably, distinct.
(3) Castaways. A stranger as such was generally through-
out the islands an enemy to be killed. Thus at Florida a
stranger who bad escaped from a wreck on to an islet was
killed when seen, and spoken of as a cocoa-nut that had floated34&
Miscellaneous.
[ch.
ashore. There was a common belief that a stranger would
bring with him disease or some other mischief. But it was
often a question whether a castaway was a stranger. If he
were recognised as belonging to an hostile district, there was
no doubt of his fate ; but if he fell into the hands of those
to whose division, hem a or veve, he belonged, he would prob-
ably be saved. It is a not uncommon thing that canoes
should be blown from Santa Cruz and the Reef Islands to
Malanta and Ulawa; the men on board them were not
wholly strangers, though personally unknown; they were men
and from known lands, not strange beings like white men
from without the world. They were therefore received as
guests, sometimes establishing themselves after a while by
marriage, sometimes waiting an opportunity to return.
Many single canoes from time to time have been blown away
from Polynesian islands, and have drifted to the Banks’
Islands; in many cases the castaways have been kindly treated,
and have added a strain to the native race. Within the
last forty years men from Tikopia have twice been most
kindly received at Mota.
(4) Slaves. There is no such thing as slavery properly so
called. In head-hunting expeditions prisoners are made for
the sake of their heads, to be used when occasion requires, and
such persons live with their captors in a condition very
different from that of freedom, but they are not taken or
maintained for the purposes of service. In the same islands
when a successful attack and massacre enriches the victors
with many heads, they spare and carry off children, whom they
bring up among their own people. Such a seka will certainly
be killed for a head or for a sacrifice before any native member
of the community, but he lives as an adopted member, shares
the work, pleasures, and dangers of those with whom he
dwells, and often becomes a leading personage among them.
A refugee or a castaway is not a slave but a guest; his life
is naturally much less valued than that of a man of the place,
and useful services are expected from him, while he mixes
freely and on equal terms with the common people.xviii.] Burying and Burning Alive.	347
(5)	Burying alive. Nothing seems more inhuman than the
practice of burying sick and aged people alive, yet it is
certain that when this was done there was generally a kind-
ness intended. It is true that sometimes the relatives of the
sick became tired of waiting upon them, and buried them
when they thought they ought to be ready for it; but even
in such cases the sick and aged acquiesced. It was common
for them to beg their friends to put them out of their misery.
Some years ago a man at Mota buried his brother, who was
in extreme weakness from influenza ; but he heaped the earth
loosely over his head, and went from time to time to ask
him whether he were still alive. Of late years, though old
people ask for it, their friends will not consent. Not long
ago in Pentecost, a woman after a lingering sickness in a time
of famine was buried, and was heard for three days crying
in her grave. In Lepers’ Island the patient was sometimes
strangled, with his own consent1.
(6)	Burning alive. This has only been heard of at Araga,
Pentecost Island. In fighting time there, if a great man
were very angry with the hostile party, he would burn a
wounded enemy. When peace had been made, and the chiefs
had ordered all to behave well that the country might settle
down in quiet, if any one committed such a crime as would
break up the peace, such as adultery, they would tie him to a
tree, heap firewood round him, and burn him alive, a proof
to the opposite party of their detestation of his wickedness.
This was not done coollyr as a matter of course in the execu-
tion of a law, but as a horrible thing to do, and done for the
horror of it; a horror renewed in the voice and face of the
native who told me of the roaring flames and shrieks of
agony.
1 In the same island, in the bush country, there was a great man who had
a poor brother. In a time of famine the poor man stole food, not asking food
from his brother, or taking it from him. The chief buried his brother alive,
in spite of his own wife’s entreaties, and the poor mans supplications ; he
bound him, dug a grave, put mats in it, threw him in and buried him. The
act was shocking to the opinion of the islanders, but it marked a great man
who would do what he chose.343
Miscellaneous.
[CH.
(7) Heavenly Bodies. There is no appearance of a belief
that any heavenly bodies are living beings ; in the Banks’
Islands the Snn and Moon are thought to be rocks or islands.
In Lepers’ Island the story is told that the Sun and the
Moon quarrelled while the Sun was making a mash of wild
yam, and that he threw the mess in a rage at the Moon’s face,
on which the splashes are to be seen; but this is told without
any serious belief. It is commonly believed that there is a
human being, male or female, in the Moon. The stories of
Vulaninggela and Kamakajaku shew the belief in Florida and
Ysabel that there is a person who goes with the Sun and
whose name is Sun, rather than that the Sun is a person. In
Florida the name of the Man in the Moon is Ngava; when
the Moon rises full they cry ‘ There is Ngava sitting.’ Every
new moon is thought to be really new. No cause is supposed
for eclipses, unless it be the magic of some weather-doctor;
an eclipse is a wonder, a portent, bringing an appalling sense
of danger, which finds expression in shouting, blowing conehs,
and beating house roofs, with no very distinct purpose of
driving the fearful thing' away. Eclipses of the sun are not
recognised as occurring at Mota. When a remarkable comet,
called in the Banks’ Islands a ‘ smoking star,’ appeared in
the year 1882, the Lepers’ islanders blew conchs to drive it
away, or at least to divert the mischief. A falling star is
the same sort of portent; some great man will die, there will
be an attack of enemies. The appearance of two stars
close together, warne in Lepers’ Island, signifies war. The
Solomon Islands people are more concerned about the stars
than their Eastern brethren, perhaps because of their longer
voj'ages; the Santa Cruz people and Beef islanders excel all
the rest in their practical astronomy. The Banks’ islanders
and Northern New Hebrides people content themselves with
distinguishing the Pleiades, by which the approach of yam
harvest is marked, and with calling the planets masoi, from their
roundness, as distinct from vitu, stars. In Florida the early
morning star is called gawa ni voiu, the quartz pebble for
setting off to sea; when it rises later it is gam a ni ndani,xviii.]	Heavenly Bodies. Seasons.	349
the shining- stone of light; the Pleiades are togo ni samu, the
company of maidens ; Orion’s belt is the peko, the war canoe ;
the evening star is vaovarongo diva, listen for the oven, because
the daily meal is taken as the evening draws on ; stars are
called dead men’s eyes. At Saa the Southern Cross is ape,
the net, with four men letting- it down to catch the palolo,
and the Pointers are two men cooking what has been caught,
because the palolo appears when one of the Pointers ajipears
above the horizon ; the Pleiades are apurunge, the tangle ; the
Southern Triangle is Three men in a canoe; Mars is the
Red Pig.
(8) Months and Seasons. The moon is naturally the
measure of time ; there is no native notion of a year as a
period of fixed time ; the word, tan or niulu, which corresponds
most nearly to the word year, signifies a season, and so now
the space of time between recurring seasons ; thus the yam
has its tau, its season of five moons from the planting, when
the erythrina is in flower, till the harvest after the palolo
has come and gone ; the bread-fruit has its tau during
the winter months ; the banana and the cocoa-nut have no
tau, being at all times in fruit. The notion of a year as the
time from yam to yam, from palolo to palolo, has been
readily received ; it is very doubtful if such a conception
is anywhere purely native. It is impossible to fit the native
succession of moons into a solar year ; months have their
names from what is done and what happens when the moon
appears and while it lasts ; the same moon has different
names. If all the names of moons in use in one language
were set in order the periods of time would overlap, and the
native year would be artificially made up of twenty or thirty
months. The moons and seasons of Mota in the Banks’
Islands may serve as an example. The garden work of the
year is the principal guide to the arrangement, the succession
of (1) clearing garden ground, uma ; (a) cutting down the
trees, tara; (3) turning over and piling up the stuff, rakasag;
(4) burning it, sing ; (5) digging the holes for yams, nur, and
planting, riv. Then follows the care of the yam plants till35°
Miscellaneous.
[CH.
the harvest, after which preparation for the next crop begins
again. At the same time the regular winds and calms are
observed, the spring of grass, the conspicuous flowering of
certain trees, the bursting into leaf of the few deciduous trees.
When a certain grass, magolo, springs, the winter as it must
he called is over ; when the erythrina, rara, is in flower it
is the cool season ; magoto therefore and rara are names of
seasons in native use, and answer roughly to summer and
winter. The strange and exciting appearance of the well-
known annelid, the palolo, un, sets a wide mark on the
seasons. The April moon coincides pretty well with the
time of the magoto qaro, the fresh grass; clearing, uma, of
gardens goes on, the trade wind is steady. This is followed
by the magoto rango, the withered grass ; both are months
of cutting down trees in the gardens, vule taraiara, and
in the latter the stuff is burnt. In July the erythrina, rara,
begins to flower, it is the nago rara, the face of winter;
gardens are fenced, it is a moon of planting yams, vide vatvut.
Planting continues into August, when the erythrina is in
full flower, tur rara, the gaviga Malay apple flowering at
the same time ; the south-east wind gauna blows ; the yams
begin to shoot, and are stuck with reeds. In the next
month the erythrina puts out its leaves, it is the end of it,
here rara ; the yam vines run up the reeds and are trained,
taur, upon them; the reeds are broken and bent over, ruqa,
to let them run freely; the ground is kept clear of weeds;
the tendrils curl, and the tubers are well formed. Then
come the months of calm, when three moons are named from
the iin palolo, first the un rig, the little un, or the bitter,
un gogoiia, when at the full moon a few of the annelids appear.
It is now the tau matua, the season of maturity; yams can be
eaten, and if the weather is favourable a second crop is
planted. The un lava, great palolo, follows, when at the
full moon for one night the annelid appears on the reefs
in swarms; the whole population is on the beach taking up
the un in every vessel and with every contrivance. This
is the moon of the yam harvest; the vines are cut, goro,XVIII.]
Mot a Months. Narcotics.
35i
(in old days this was done with a shell), and the tubers
very carefully taken up with digging1 sticks to be stored.
A few un appear at the next moon, the werei, which may
be translated the rump, of the un. In this moon they
begin again to uma, clear the gardens ; the wind blows again
from the west, the ganoi, over Vanua Lava. It is now Novem-
ber or December, the togalau wind blows from the north-west;
it is exceedingly hot, fish die in the shallow pools, the reeds
shoot up into flower; it is the moon of shooting up, cute
wotgoro. The next month is the vusiaru, the wind beats upon
the casuarina trees upon the cliffs; the next again is called
tetemavuru, the wind blows hard and drives off flying frag-
ments from the seeded reeds; these are hurricane months.
The last in order is the month that beats and rattles, lamasag
noronoro, the dry reeds ; the wind blows strong and steady,
work is begun again, they ra/casag, to dry the rubbish of
their clearings, and make ready the fences for new gardens.
By this time the heat is past, the grass begins to spring
again, and the winter months return.
(9) Narcotics. The use of the areca nut mbua, chewed
with the betel leaf, with the addition of coral lime, is universal
in the Solomon Islands and Santa Cruz, and extends to
Tikopia; to the eastward it is unknown. Solomon islanders
on their way to Norfolk Island look wistfully at a species of
areca-palm in the Torres Islands, the nuts of which the
natives of that group sometimes chew to quiet hunger, hut
which will not do for those who know the mbua, and they can
replenish their stock of betel leaves in the New Hebrides,
where that pepper grows naturally, but they feel that they
have passed into a foreign region. In the Banks’ Islands and
New Hebrides they drink the infusion of the root of the Piper
methysticum well known as kava, called gea at Mota, malowo
in Aurora. This is in the Banks’ Islands so recent an intro-
duction that the use of it had not spread to Santa Maria a
few years ago. The difference in the mode of preparation
seems to point to two distinct sources or times of introduction.
In the Banks’ Islands drinking the gea is called woana; the352
Miscellaneous.
[ch.
root is chewed by the drinker; when the fibres are separated
a little water is taken into the mouth to assist in squeezing
out the saliva, water is added again in the cocoa-nut-shell cup,
and the fibres being removed and well squeezed over the cup
the potion is ready. In Aurora the malowo is pounded with
a rough coral pestle and mortar. The moderate use of this
narcotic has no had effect; excess, which is more common per-
haps in the New Hebrides, makes a man listless and stupid.
The plant used is not indigenous; there is indeed a pepper of
the same species very common, but it will not do for the
woana. There is a certain sacred character about the plant,
as has been shewn, and the use of it is confined to men. The
introduction of tobacco into common use in the Northern New
Hebrides and Banks’ Islands is quite recent, but the people
are now given up to the use of it. Smoking was universal in
the Solomon Islands, at. Florida, Ysabel, and San Cristoval,
thirty years ago, with men, women, and infant children, and
the tobacco was grown and prepared by the natives; yet it
was not known at Saa at that time, where it has since been
introduced from Arosi in San Cristoval, and the elder men at
Florida remember when it was a new thing in their childhood.
There has been for many years a good deal of intercourse
with whalers at San Cristoval ; they have no native name for
tobacco there, and I believe never grew it; its introduction
then is readily accounted for. In Florida the native-grown
tobacco, now discarded for the far stronger tambaika, was called
vavuru, and the dried leaves were made up in twists ; the pipe,
formerly made of a shell and a reed in evident imitation of the
European pipe, is still pipiala; the old people say that the
seed had come from a ship h
1 Logana at Florida, whom I should not take to be more than 60 years old,
was grown up when he first saw a ship. The first he saw had two masts; the
people on board traded well and fairly, giving a piece of iron for a big yam, a
hatchet for a cockatoo. This was probably the Southern Cross. The name
given at first was ungaungau, not vale a as now. Ships were thought to belong
to tindalo ghosts, and to portend a famine; those who saw them ran away
and hid themselves in their houses. Tobacco appears to l ave been introducedxvm.]	Counting. Measures.	353
(10) Counting. Measures. The systems of numeration in
use among Melanesians might well here be exhibited and
explained, but I have treated the subject elsewhere. It will be
however reasonable to say something as to methods of counting.
The fingers are the natural counters ; in the use of them there
is curious variation. In the Banks’ Islands the right thumb
is turned down first, and is followed by the fingers of the
right hand and then of the left, both hands with closed fists
being held up together to shew the completed ten. It is the
number of fingers turned down that is to be noticed, not of
those that stand up. In Florida they begin with the little
finger. In Lepers’ Island they begin with the thumb, but
having reached five with the little finger they do not go on
to the other hand, but throw up the fingers they have turned
down, beginning with the forefinger and keeping the thumb
for ten. The use of the cycas leaf for counting (page 373) is
common to the Banks’ Islands and New Hebrides. A string
with knots to mark the days is used in the Solomon Islands.
In Florida stones and canarinm shells are used to help in
counting; at a feast a man will go round with a basket, and
every one present will put some small thing into it, that so
the number entertained may be known. At Saa when yams
are counted two men count out each five, making ten, and as
each ten is made they call out ‘ one,’ ‘ two,’ and so on. A
man sits by, and when 1 ten ’ is called making a hundred, he
puts down a little yam for a tally.
The natural measure of length may be said to be the
fathom, the width of the outstretched arms, the Florida goto,
Mota rova. Examples of more particular measurements may
be taken from Mota; the taut fathom, rova togtogoa, is the
line stretched as far as possible with the arms thrown back;
rova ate lue, the fathom of looking out, is that of a line
stretched away as far as possible by the left hand, but held by
the right upon the shoulder, where the face turns round to
to Florida and Bugotu by Europeans who were not whalers ; their pipe in
form, and perhaps in name, does not allow of a connexion with the tobacco-
smoking of New Guinea.
a a354
Miscellaneous.
(_CH.
meet it; another is avawo svs, from the outstretched left hand
to the right nipple ; alo masale pci, at the watercourse, from
the left hand to the breast bone. Lesser measurements are,
alo vivngai, from the arm pit; alo maluk, from the hollow of the
elbow to the fingers’ end ; sor/o siwo, from wrist to finger end.
(u) Sal/ilalions. People living in small communities and
always in view of one another have little need for salutations,
and there is little to be said upon the subject in regard to
Melanesia. If any one passes through a village he will be asked
whence he comes, and bid to go on, as a kind of salutation ;
he will say on leaving, 1 You stay.’ There is, however, in the
Banks’ Islands a friendly action called carpis; two men insert
each the middle finger of his right hand between two of his
friend’s fingers, grip them tight together, and then quickly
pull them asunder with a crack. This is a greeting, a mark
of fellowship and of approval. Kissing is not indigenous ; to
punpun is analogous to it, snuffing with the nose, not rubbing
noses, and this is not thought proper or becoming to be done
except to children. Pmbbing noses is practised in the Poly-
nesian settlements only. It is not the custom to say
anything by way of thanks; it is rather improper to show
emotion when anything is given, or when friends meet again ;
silence with the ej-es cast down is the sign of the inward
trembling or shyness which they feel, or think they ought to
feel, under these circumstances. There is no lack of a word
which may be fairly translated ‘ thank ’ ; and certainly no one
who has given cause for it will say that Melanesians have no
gratitude; others probably are ready enough to say it.
(12) Wild lien. In Florida they believe that on the
mountains of Laudari, the part of Guadalcanal- upon which
their own island looks out, there are wild men whom they call
Mumulou. They are men, and have language; the hair of
their heads is straight and reaching down their legs, their
bodies are covered with long hair, and thejr have long nails;
they arc large and tall, but not above the size of men. One
was killed not long ago, the coast people of Laudari say, and
so they know- very w-ell what they are like. They live inXVIII.]
Wild Men.
355
caves in the mountains; they plant nothing, and cat snakes
and lizards. They eat any coast man they can catch; they
carry on their hacks hags filled with pieces of obsidian, with
which to pelt men whom they see, and they set nets round
trees to catch men who have climbed them ; they use spears
also. In Saa they say there are Mumu in the forest, human,
very small in stature, but very strong and swift; they have
very long hair, and long nails, with which they tear the
coast men to devour them ; they go about in threes, a male, a
female, and a child. Lastly, Saa men who have been in the
‘ thief-ships ’ have seen the Australian natives like the Mumu.
In the New Hebrides, similar creatures are seen basking on
the rocks of the slopes of the great volcano of Ambrym ; even
in the little island of Mae they used to be seen—for they are
now extinct—on the Three Hills. In Lepers’ Island the wild
men are called Mae ; they have long hair, long teeth, they
dwell in caves, carry off pigs, and if they meet a man alone
will seize and eat him. In the night they are heard crying
in the valleys, and it is then said that the Mae is washing
her child. The name shows some connexion with the super-
stition described (page 188), but they call no snake a wae, and
these are men. However much these stories vary, the belief
may be said to be general from Ysabel to Mae, just as stories
of wild men have been current in New Zealand. Descriptions
very much like these have their place in grave treatises
on mankind. It may be said to be certain that the
Melanesian belief has no foundation in present fact in the
existence either of ape-like men or man-like apes ; it may be
a question whether the belief is founded on the memory of large
simians in former seats of the Melanesian people. To myself,
so far as it has any foundation at all in fact, it appears to
be a fanciful exaggeration of the difference, which the coast
people are much disposed to exaggerate, between themselves
and the men of the uta, the inland tracts, who have no
canoes and cannot swim, the true ‘ orang utan ’ or man of the
woods, the ‘ man-bush ’ of pigeon-English.
a a 2CHAPTER XIX.
STORIES.
The native Stories ov Folk-tales which follow are all of them,
with the exception of the first, translated from the manuscripts
written for me by natives of the various islands in which the
stories are told. The first example was written down by the
Rev. A. Penny at Florida, in the native language as he heard
the story told. The translation is as accurate and literal in
each case as I could make it; the detailed prolixity of a native
narrative is very characteristic; and it is possible that, with
the varying cpiality of the story-telling of the individual
writers, there may appear something also of the different
narrative style of the eastern and western groups of these
islands of Melanesia. The value of truly native stories is
beyond all question; they exhibit native life in the particular
details which come in the course of the narrative, they are full
of the conceptions which the native people entertain about the
world around them, they show the native mind active in fancy
and imagination, and they form a rich store of subjects for
comparison with the folk-tales of other parts of the world.
To the question how far those who tell and those who hear
these stories believe them to be true it is hard to give an
answer. To some extent they are believed, and to a great
extent they are treated as flights of fancy. A story-teller
warming to his subject, and with all that he relates pictured
in his mind, very likely believes it all as he tells the tale ;
a story will be quoted to explain or confirm some statement,The Heron and the Turtle.
357
and would have little effect if not brought forth as true ;
a story, because it has always been told and heard, is not open
to much doubt or criticism. But it may be safely said that to
the natives a story is not a piece of history; the marvels are
not very seriously taken, however much they are enjoyed ;
anything seems possible of course when magic is at work and
when spirits are the agents; that there are such spirits as
Qat, for example, is not doubted, and the story goes that he
performed certain feats. I cannot, however, think that the
natives seriously believe that birds and fish talk; I have
never discovered from them that they do not distinguish
between animate and inanimate things, between birds and
beasts and men. When an owl in a story talks and cooks food,
both actions are on a level, not of supposed fact but of fancy.
The native mind is full of lively intelligence, and is by no
means to be judged incapable of the invention of marvels and
enjoyment of the flights of fancy; though in the highest flights
it moves in accordance with generally accepted beliefs. There
is in Florida and in biota a title for a story to tell, tugu ni
pitu, kakae lea, which marks the character of the narrative.
These stories are here divided into three classes: I. Animal
Stories, concerned mostly with birds and fishes, as is natural
in islands were mammals are very few; II. Stories con-
taining Myths and Tales concerning the origin of things;
III. Wonder Tales.
I. ANIMAL STORIES.
i. The Heron and the Turtle. Florida.
One day a Soo, Fleron, caught his foot fast in the coral;
the tide came in, but his neck was long. When the tide
reached to the top of his neck there came along a Shark.
Come and save me, says the Soo. Wait a bit, says the Shark.
There comes a Boila ; Come and save my life, says the Soo ;
and the Boila says to him, Wait a bit, says he. There comesStories.
[ch.
353
the great Garfish ; Come and save me, brother, says the Soo ;
the Garfish says, Wait a hit. There comes a Rock-cod; Come
and save my life, says the Soo ; ait a bit, says the Rock-cod.
There comes a Crocodile; Come and save me, says the Soo;
Wait a bit, says the Crocodile. In the end all the fish came,
and nothing could be done. Then comes a Turtle. Brother!
come here and save my life, says the Soo. And the Turtle says,
You will pay me of course. And the Soo says, I have nothing
with me to pay you with. And there was a sea-urchin
alongside the Soo, and he says, I will pay you with money,
says he. But the Turtle says, No. And the Soo says, Dog’s
teeth, and porpoise teeth ; but the Turtle says, No, I don’t
want it. Then he offers him the sea-urchin, and the Turtle
eats it up with great delight, and says joyfully, Now I will
save you, you have given me my pay. So he smashes to
fragments the stone (that held the bird’s foot) and the Soo
is saved. And the Soo says, Now you have saved my life ;
if ever hereafter you are in need, in case you are going to
he killed and I should hear you call, I will come and save
you, says he.
After this the people of Hagelonga went to fish, and they
let down their net and sat holding the corners of it on their
tripods of poles. There comes a shark ; A fish below ! shall
we pull up the net ? say some; Not that, say the others.
There comes a rock-cod; A fish below! shall we pull up ?
say some; No, say the others. In the end all the fish in the
sea come along, and they don’t pull'up the net. Then comes
round the turtle, and comes into the middle of the net, and
they cry, Here he is ! we will see what he is worth. And
the turtle comes right up into the net, and they take him,
and tie him, and carry him ashore, and make a fence round
him. And the chief of Hagelonga says, To-morrow we will
split wood for him, and get leaves for him, and dig up yams
for him, this turtle of ours, says the chief. So as soon as it
was light they went off, and they split wood, and they
gathered leaves, and they dug food ; and they appointed the
boys to watch the turtle and went away. And when theyxix.]	The Heron and the Turtle.	359
were far away the Soo comes along, and the boys say to him,
Where have you come from ? and the Soo says to them,
I am just idling about; and he says to them, Should you
like me to dance for you? says he. And the boys say, Yes,
we should like you to dance for us. And the Soo says, Bring
me the porpoise teeth and dog’s teeth ornaments of your
fathers and mothers, that I may dress myself up in the best.
And they brought him the best ornaments, and he dressed
himself out in them, and then he danced for them. So
he danced along to the fence in which the Turtle was, and
the Turtle saw him coming, and cried out, Now I am to die,
my brother, cries he. And the Soo says to him, And now I
shall save your life, because you saved mine before. And the
Soo came into the house where the boys were, and there he
danced for them. And he says, Kerembaembae ! Kerembaembae !
Loosed is your leg that they have tied ! and his leg is loosed.
Kerembaembae! Slipped out is your head! and his head
slipped out. Kerembaembae ! Clear the forepart! and the fore-
part of him was clear. Kerembaembae ! Clear the hinder part!
and his hinder part was clear. Kerembaembae ! Clear the rest
of you! and the rest of him was clear. Kerembaembae!
Follow the path ! Kerembaembae ! Reach the sand ! Kerembaem-
bae ! Down with you into the sea ! Kerembaembae ! Dive out
of sight! Kerembaembae ! Go a fathom’s length ! Kerembaembae !
Go two fathoms ! So he escaped with his life. And the
people returned from inland and came out into the open,
and looked at the fence. But the Soo was gone ; and they
said, Some one has stolen our turtle ; and they asked the
boys, and said, Who has been here now ? And the hoys said,
There was only a Soo came here and danced for us, and we
gave him all your things, and he deceived us so that we
did not go and look after the turtle, said the hoys to them.
And bad were the feelings of the people of the village; and
they went and looked at the path, and there they saw the
traces of the turtle, and they said, Yes, he has saved himself
for certain, nobody has stolen him, said they.Stories.
[ch.
360
2. The Three Fish. Ureparapara.
The story of the Watwata (an Ostracion) and the Sole. The
tw o were scratching1 one another, and the Sole said to the Wat-
wata, Scratch me. But the Watwata said, No, you shall scratch
me first. And the Sole scratched the Watwata, scratched him
wTell. And the Watwata. said, Brother, you have scratched me
badly, but the Sole said, No, it is all right. And the Watwata
said, Well! now I shall scratch you in my turn. After that he
scratched him, scratched him extremely thin. And the Sole
said, Well! you have scratched me badly, but we two will
play hide and seek. And the Sole said, You shall hide first.
After that the Watwata hid, and got out of sight under a
stone. The Sole sought him and found him. After that
the Sole hid in his turn, and buried himself in the sand;
and the Watwata sought him in vain. But the Song (a fish
which shews its teeth) stood and laughed at it; and he has
grinned so ever since. It is finished.
3. The Rat and the Rail. Ureparapara.
A Rat and a Rail (Porphyrio) were taking a walk together,
and they found a gaviga-tree (eugenia) with ripe fruit.
They stood under it and disputed as to which of them should
climb up. The Rat said, Rail, climb up ! The Rail said, You !
So they disputed till the Rat climbed up. Then the Rail
begged of the Rat, Brother, give me that black ripe one ; but
the Rat ate it, and threw him down the stone. Then said the
Rail again, Brother, give me that one, it is very ripe indeed ;
but the Rat ate it all, and again threw down only the stone.
Thus the Rail begged again and again for fruit, and the Rat
treated him in the same way. At last the Rail made one more
petition to the Rat, Brother, give me that one that is red ripe ;
and the Rat took it and threw it down upon the forehead
of the Rail, and there it stuck fast. Eh ! brother, said the
Rail, you have made game of me, my brother; but makeXIX.]
The Birds Voyage.	361
haste and come down, be quick about it. Then the Rail
took the unfolded leaf of a dracaena ; and as the Rat was
coming down the stem of the tree, he was standing ready,
and thrust it hard into the rump of the Rat, and there it
stood fast. So the tail in the Rat’s rump is the unfolded
leaf of a dracaena that the Rail fixed firmly there; and on
the forehead of the Rail is the gavi.ga fruit, still red, that the
Rat threw down upon it.
4. The Birds’ Voyage. Mota.
A Story to tell. They lived in their place. The tawan was
in fruit at Qakea ; the wind began to blow ; then said they,
Well, now at last we will paddle over and eat tawan. So they
make a start and go, and come from here and there. And
the renga, Green Parrot, says, I go with you; but they say,
O-o-o! You just go back, lest your father should be angry
with us about you. And he sings ‘ I go and tell my daddy!
the wind has blown hard against you ; beat against you, beat,
beat! ’ Ah, well! come along! and he gets on board. Then says
the Wasia, You fellows, where are you going to? And they
say, To Qakea, to eat tawan. So says he, I will go with you ;
and they say, Stay where you are, lest your father and
mother scold us on your account. Then he sings, ‘ I go and
tell my daddy ! the wind has blown hard against you, beat
against you, beat, beat! ’ Ah, well! come along! and he gets
on board. Then the Pigeon says, You fellows, where are you
going? And they say, For a voyage. And he says, I will
go with you; but they say, Not you; lest your father should
scold us about you. And he sings, ‘ I go and tell my daddy !
The wind has blown hard against you, beat against you, beat,
beat! ’ Ah, well! come along! and he gets on board. And
when all were on board there wTas a Hermit Crab sitting there,
and he said, You fellows, just let me come. But they said,
You just stay there to look after our island. And he said,
Nay, my brothers, you won’t make me miserable. And they
said, No ! It is only we who can climb that are going, not you362
Stories.
[ch.
who crawl. And he says, Take me over! I will sit under the
tawan-trees, and you will eat making- the fruit fall, and I will
eat on the ground. So they said, Very well! you have argued
against us, but come along; and he gets on board. Then the
Weru says to the Crab, Friend, sit up this way near me ; and he
crawls along and sits near him. Then the Weru says to him,
Friend, while we two are sitting here, don’t shuffle about, lest
you make a hole in the canoe. (The canoe was the leaf of a
giant arum.) And he says, Yes, I know all about that. But
the Weru keeps an eye upon him, and if he shuffles with his
claws the Weru says to him, Friend, I keep telling you, don’t
be shuffling about; eh! you will soon have made a hole in
the canoe! But he says, Eh! Friend, I know all about it.
The wind had come down into their sail, and they were
already in the open sea; and the Crab shuffled about, and his
claw pierced right through the canoe, and the water came
pouring quickly in. (In another version the Crab was set to
bale the canoe, and scratched a hole.) And they cried out,
Be quick I our canoe has a hole in it, the Crab had trodden it
through. And they said, Well, let us leap overboard; and they
all of them leapt overboard, and the Crab leapt overboard, and
sank right out of sight to the bottom of the sea ; but they all
of them swam, and he crawled along on the bottom. And
they all swam and came out upon the shore, but not he you
may be sure. Then they said, Fellows! are we all men alive
or not? And some one said, No, there is one poor fellow our
friend missing. So they said, Ah! but who will swim after
him, and dive in search of him ? And they spoke to one, and
he refused, and to another, and he refused ; then said the Weru
(eulabeornis), Here am I, I will go and look for him. So she
swims, and dives, and does not find him, and comes up to the
surface ; and dives again, and goes on diving, and her body
turns black, and dives, and dives, and dives, and her eyes turn
red. But the Crab had already crawled up ashore before them
all; and there he was quietly sitting. And they were on the
sand in a clump of icidawe, when the Weru swam up ; and they
said, Hallo ! Have you seen him, or not ? And she says, Ah !xix.]	The Birds Voyage.	363
my brothers, you know that I have sought him, and have not
seen him at all; and I have dived and dived, and my body is
black and blue, and my eyes are red ; and so I have swum up
ashore. But as they are still together, they see the Crab
crawling out into the open, and they say, Hallo! where did
you swim up from the sea ? And he said, Indeed when we
became pieces of the wreck, you know, I sank right down, you
know, to the bottom of the sea, and then I crawled here. And
they said, Ewe! we said you were the missing one of our
number, but it is not so, we are all safe. Come, let us tidy
ourselves up. Then said the Tasis to the Tagere, Friend, come
here and make me tidy; and the Qafman said to the Green
Parrot, I will tidy you, and the Tatagoras said to the Wasia, I
will tidy you ; and they all of them sat down in pairs. Then
said the Rat to the Owl, Friend, come here, let me make you
tidy; so he sits down and the Rat begins to make him tidy;
and as he combs his head he keeps saying,! Comb-comb-dung-
dung, comb-comb-dung-dung ’; and he dungs upon the head
of the Owl. Then says the Rat, My paws are tired out, let
some one else take my place. I will, says the Mes, the
trichoglossus parrot; so the Rat runs off, and the Mes sits down
in his place. And the flies parrot combs the Owl’s head, and
perceives that it smells, and Is-is ! cries the Parrot. And the
Owl asks, Eh ? what is the matter, friend ? Oh ! nothing, he
says. But he says, Speak out; and the Parrot says, Oh ! your
friend the Rat has played you a trick, he has played you a
trick in tidying you ; he has made a pig of himself upon you.
Then said the Owl, Really ! is that true ? and he flies off and
chases the Rat; and the two go round and about. But the
Rat saw a hole and ran into it, and the Owl sat by helpless.
Then says he, What shall I do to this fellow who has made a
mock of me ? and he cracks a cocoa-nut and sets it up opposite
the mouth of the hole ; but the Rat did not come out. Then
says he, What shall I do to deceive this Rat ? and he sought
what he might do. Then says he, If I roast this red wasia
caladium and try, will that do or not ? So he roasts it right
off; and as he scrapes that root the smell goes out and reaches364
Stories.
[ch.
the Rat in the hole. And when it was cooked he broke it, and
put it at the mouth of the hole. Then the Rat creeps out to
eat the wasia, and the Owl is staring hard at the mouth of the
hole, if perchance he may see the Rat creep out. And he says,
That will do; and now be sure you die this minute! And
the Rat came out to eat; but the Owl swooped down upon him,
and killed him you may be sure with his talons, and ate
him up.
5. The Shark and the Shake. Lepers’ Island.
This is about the Shark and the Snake. They quarrelled,
and the Shark told the Snake to come down into the sea, that
the Shark might eat him. The Snake said to him, They will
kill you, and I shall eat a bit of you. Now when they killed
the Shark, the Snake went down into the sea and ate the
Shark.
6. The Hen and her Chickens. Lepers’ Island.
This is about a Hen that had ten Chickens. So they went
about seeking their food, and they fell in with the tuber of a
wild yam, a gigimbo. After a while the tuber got up and ate
one of the chickens. They called to a Kite, which said to the
Hen, Put them under me. So they got there and stayed.
Presently the Tuber came and asked the Kite, Where are
they? He-i, said he, I don’t know. So the Tuber scolded the
Kite; and the Kite flew down and took it up from the
ground, and hovered with it in the sky, and then let it drop
down to the ground. Then another took it up, and hovered
in turn in the sky, and dropped it, and it fell down and broke
in two. So the two Kites divided the Tuber between them;
therefore some of the tubers are good, and some are bad. We
call the name of the good tuber nggeremanggeggneni.XIX.]
Kamakajaku.
365
II. MYTHS AND TALES OF ORIGINS.
1. The Stohy of Kamakajaku. Bugotu, Ysabel Island.
He dwelt upon the hill at Gaji; and he was mending his
nets, and he looked down upon the ocean, and saw it dark
exceedingly. And his grandchildren went down to the sea to
fish upon the reef, and Kamakajaku said to them, Go and
dip salt-water for me in the place I see the sea like that, said
he to them. And his grandchildren went forth and down and
fished on the beach, and fished with nets; and afterwards
they dipped the salt-water, and came up and arrived at the
village, and wTent and gave it to him. And he said to them,
Give the dish hither, and I will pour it down and see if the
blackness of it is like what I looked down upon, said he.
And he poured it down, and looked and did not find it like
what he looked down upon from his place upon the hill.
And it was morning, and he took the salt-water-vessel, and
went forth down, and put in his ear a bit of obsidian, and
went down and came to the sea, and put down on the beach
his bag and club and shield; and so he took in his hand the
vessel and waded, and went down from the shore, and looked
up to the hill where he dwelt, and did not yet get sight of it,
and swam still out from the shore till he saw the hill at Gaji,
and then he dipped. And the surface of the sea sounded and
bubbled, and he heard coming-to-him a Komhili (King-fish),
a very great fish ; and it came and swallowed him, and went-
off with him eastwards to the rising up of the sun, and went
off with him till it arrived with him at a shallow place, and it
threw itself about so that Kamakajaku perceived that there
was a beach probably. Here am I, says he, and he thought
of the obsidian in his ear, and felt for it and found it, and cut
asunder the belly of the Kombili, and leapt out, and saw a
brightness. And he sat down and pondered, Where I wonder
am I ? he said. So up rose the Sun with a bang, and rolling
from side to side. And the Sun says, Don’t stand in my way,366
Stories.
[_CH.
j'ou will die at once; stay on my right, says he. And he
drew aside till the Sun rose away, and then he followed; and
they two went up towards heaven, and -went on and arrived
at the village of the Sun’s children. And he said, Here you
stay, said he; so he starved with them, with his children and
grandchildren, and the Sun went off. And Kamakajaku
stayed ; and they asked him, Whence did you come hither?
And he said, From the earth ; I dwelt in my place, and I
dipped salt-water, and a big fish swallowed me, and so I
arrived here at your good town. So they remained in
company; and they ate only raw food, those people above;
and he shewed them fire, so that they ate cooked food. And
they said to him, Don’t go to that place, it is taboo, said
they to him; and thejr went their way. And he kept house,
and thought what that was they had said ; Don’t you go, they
said, said he. And he went over, and opened up a stone which
was the covering of a hole in the sky, and he looked down on
his place at Gaji, and he cried. They brought him food, but it
was not for him (he would not have it); so they asked him,
Have you gone over by the further end of the house there ?
We forbade you to go there. Yes. And do you want to go
down? And he said, Yes. And thejr made a house, and gave
him a banana, and gave him seed of pan (to dye with), and
they took a cane and tied it to the saddle-piece of the house,
and he Kamakajaku sat in it. And they let it down. And
they said, When the birds and such things cry, don’t look
out, but when the cicalas and the things that live on the
earth cry, then you may look out; and they let him down,
let him down. And when one cane was too short, they tied
another to it, and it reached down to the hill and rested.
And his friends had been seeking him, because they thought
that he was dead already. And on the day that he came
down again from heaven, they rejoiced because they saw him
again, and good was their heart. And he lived a long while,
till he died on his hill Gaji. And it is finished; yes, it is
just this, the Story of Kamakajaku.XIX.]
Sainuku. The Mim.
367
2. The Stoky of Samuku. Bugotu, Ysabel Island.
Samuku lived in his village, and built bis house, and worked,
and good and many were his affairs; so be took a wife and
married, and they two lived well, and agreed perfectly well
together, and worked, and much was their food. And
Samuku came home and asked for food, because he was
hungry, and his wife had not prepared any food, and Sa-
muku was angry with his wife, and scolded her greatly.
And his wife said to him, I am tired of making food for you,
your father and mother are dead, who is to make j’ou food?
Go and see them in Tuhilagi, says she. And Samuku was
angry, and he sat and thought; and he said, Good, I will go
and see them. So he hanled down a canoe and put out to
sea to Tuhilagi, and landed at Lelegia tarunga, the Ghosts’
Mangroves, and stepped up the beach and went in shore, and
found the company of ghosts. And they asked him, Why
have you come here ? You are not dead yet, said they to
him. And Samuku answered, My wife scolded me, and sent
me here, said he. And at night he stayed in a house, and
when it was morning the house disappeared. So he played
them a trick and made a net, and they went to fish with it,
and he saw the forms of the ghosts, and the net caught in the
coral. And when it was light all the company of ghosts
departed from him, and he went down and slept on the sand.
And the people of a certain place found him and took hold
of him, and took him to be wTith them till he died. Finished
is the story of Samuku, not a very long one.
3. The Mim. Toeees Islands.
They say that the Mim people dragged the yams from
place to place, having brought them ashore at Hiw, and
then dragged them to Tugua, for which reason the yams
at Hiw and at Tugua are very large and long. But when
they dragged them along here to Lo, all the people were
down on the reefs fishing and heard nothing of it; norStories.
[CH.
368
did they know anything till they found the rind of the
yams sticking to the roots of the trees along the path.
These they picked up and planted; and on that account
the Lo yams are not very large, hut plentiful enough.
Because the Mini people sliced their yams in half for the
men of Hiw and of Tugna, and then passed on to Toga,
and sliced again for them there, on which account the yams
there are very large and long. Afterwards they crossed to
Ureparapara, where the people sliced the yams in half and
planted them. They did the same in all the islands that
way; it was only at Lo that the people did not see and hear
what was going on. The crowns of the yams remained and
were planted somewhere. The Mini people went dragging
the yams through all the islands, shouting and calling to the
men of every place to come and slice the yams, and take their
burden from them.
4. The Origin oe Poisoned Arrows. Aurora Island.
I have often heard them telling the story about it in this way.
They say that in old times there was no fighting. But there
was an old man whose name was Muesarava, who was blind
and used to stay doing nothing in the house; and he heard a
pigeon calling, and took a bow and broad-headed arrow and
went under the tree; and the pigeon let drop a bit of the
fruit it was eating, and that blind man shot at a venture into
the tree, and hit the pigeon without seeing it. And he took it
up, and went and put it into the oven together with the
yams, and sat down and sang a song. But two young fellows
came along and quietly opened that old man Muesarava’s
oven, and ate up his pigeon with some of his yams. Then
they went to another place, and sang back a song to him;
and he heard it, and went back to eat his pigeon, but found
when he uncovered the oven that it was eaten up, and that
something not good had been put in its place. Then he
was exceeding angry, and plotted a light against the people
of the place whence the two young men had come who hadXIX.]
Origin of Poisoned Arrows.
369
stolen and eaten Muesarava’s food. And now Muesarava
began to make fighting arrows of men’s bones. Muesarava
went and grabbed up with his hands a boy who had died, and
took his bones, and beat them to splinters and rubbed them
sharp. But his enemies on their side knew nothing of that,
they only cut wood into shape, or bones of fish or birds, and
fixed them in their arrows, while Muesarava on his side
prepared men’s bones. And when they fought they shot at
him and hit, but he did not die ; and he shot them and they
could not live, but died outright all of them. And they
fought again and shot at him, and hit him and he did not
die; but Muesarava shot at them and hit, and they all died.
So it often happened, and they saw that they died in very
great numbers; and they asked Muesarava why it was that
they shot him and he did not die, while he shot them and
they all of them died. Therefore he told them and said,
‘ Go and grub up one of the dead men I have shot, and scrape
his bones, and point your arrows with that.’ Upon this they
listened to his counsel and did as he had said to them; and
when they fought again they shot him, and he straightway
died.
And that thing, the dead man’s bone that Muesarava
ground to a point for himself with his own hand, still
remains, and has not yet been spoilt; the reed-shaft has been
spoilt and replaced over and over again, but that dead man’s
bone still remains; I have seen it myself in my brother’s
possession ; it still remains. The people think a great deal of
it, thinking that there is supernatural power, mana, in that
fofo arrow. If there is heard a rumour of fighting, and that
is pointed in the direction whence it comes, the fighting
comes to nothing.
5. Tagaro’s Departure. Aurora Island.
There was a man looking for his wife, and he came to
Tagaro’s village when he was not there; and he wished
to steal Tagaro’s pig, a rawe, so he caught the pig and
b b370
Stories.
[ch.
tied it with the vine of a wild yam. And Tagaro was still
in the forest when he heard the noise, and he came hack
and found where the vine had been broken off, and he was
exceedingly angry. So he cut out a canoe for himself, and
carried all the things of this world into it, and put out the
fire, but threw back a fire-brand. All the good things, they
say, he took clean away. This is the story about Tagaro.
6. How Tagaro made xiie Sea. Aurora Island.
They say that he made the sea, and that in old times the sea
was quite small, like a common pool upon the beach, and that
this pool was at the back of his house, and that there were fish
in the pool, and that he had built a stone wall round it. And
Tagaro was gone out to look at the various things he had
made, and his wife was in the village, and his two children
were at home, whom he had forbidden to go to the back of
the house. So when he was gone the thought entered into
the mind of those two, Why has our father forbidden us to go
there? And they were shooting at lizards and rats; and
after a while one said to the other, Let us go and see what
that is he has bid us keep away from. So they went and
saw the pool of salt-water with many fish crowding together
in it. And one of the boys stood on the stones Tagaro had
built up, and he sees the fish, and he shoots at one and hits it;
and as he runs to catch hold of it he threw down a stone, and
then the water ran out. And Tagaro heard the roaring of the
water and ran to stop it; and the old woman laid herself
down in the way of it, but nothing- could be done ; those two
boys who had thrown down the stone took clubs like knives
and prepared a passage for the sea, one on one side and the
other on the other side of the place, and the sea followed
as it flowed. And they think that the old woman turned
into a stone, and lies now on the part of Mae wo near
Raga.XIX.]
Origin of Soles.
37i
7. How Tagaro the Little found Fish.
Lepers’ Island.
They say that he drew down his canoe and paddled out in
search of fish ; and he saw a great rock standing in the sea, and
he floated gently without paddling to see whether he would find
fish or not. And he saw many fish rising up to the surface
from under his canoe, and he fed them with the food he had
in his hand, and he perceived that these fish knew how to
eat the food of the land. Then said he, I am going to leave
you, hut the day after to-morrow I shall grate some loko for
you to eat, and shall pour cocoa-nut sauce over it, and bring it
here to you. So he left them and stayed, they say, one day
at home. And when the second day came for him to go
he took that loko which he had sauced with cocoa-nut juice,
and launched his canoe, and paddled out to the place where
those fish were. And he called them with a song, which he
sang like this, Bulengyu sava ige ! iye wmveu, mo yaiyei worvoroa,
mo yaiyei woivoroa sole, My fish, whatever you are, nice little
fish, here is your food with sauce, your food done with cocoa-
nut sauce. But there was another person, whose name was
Merambuto, who stood on the beach, and heard Tagarombiti
calling his fish with a song like that, and next day Merambuto,
having made haste to prepare food in the night, drew down
the canoe in the early morning, Tagarombiti’s canoe, and
paddled out till he came to the place where Tagarombiti had
floated before. And he sang again that song, Bulenyyu sava
iye!—Then those fish heard his voice that it was loud, and
did not rise, because they knew it was a different person by
his loud voice. And Merambuto perceived that they did not
rise, and he altered his voice so as to be small like Taga-
rombiti’s. And he called them with a small voice singing
that song, Balenygu sava iye!—Then those fish heard that the
voice was small, and they rose all of them to the surface, and
he caught every one of them with a hook. And he made
haste to paddle ashore, and went back into his village, and
b b 2372
Stories.
[ch.
made up a fire, and put the fish in the oven. But when
it was broad daylight Tagarombiti went himself, and they
were all gone ; and he understood that this thief Merambuto
had caught all the fish, and paddled quickly back and hauled
up his canoe. And he looked for footprints to know which
way he had gone round ; and he found footjirints and followed
them, following on till he came to Merambuto’s place; and
there he went into the house to him, and sat down with him
in a friendly way. Then said Tagaro, What is that in the
oven ? I am hungry. And Merambuto said, That is my
food, but it is very bad, you cannot eat it. Then says Taga-
rombiti, Indeed ! is your food so very bad ? But those are my
fish, and you have caught them all. And he struck him, and
killed him in his house, and set fire to the house, and it was
burnt and destroyed. And Tagarombiti took back the fish
from the oven, and went back and put them into a little pool
of salt-water, and the fish revived; one side of them was
gone, one side still remained. And we call them, tavalui ige
bulei Tagaro, Tagaro’s half-fish—soles.
8. Story of the old Woman, how she made the Sea.
Lepers’ Island.
Nobody knows what her name was, but she was an old
woman. And there were two children who lived with her in
her house, but nobody knows what their father’s and mother’s
names were; the story about them is that the mother of these
two was the daughter of this old woman. Her house was a
good one, fenced about with reeds; there was a fence all
round the house, and there was a fence also made against the
back of the house, and those two children were forbidden to
go into it, because she would lie there by herself. And in
that little fence at the back of the house she put carefully a
leaf of the via (gigantic caladium); and they say that in that
leaf she always made water, and was always very strict in
forbidding those two to go there, lest they should see it.
And these two were both boys, and they were always shootingxix.]	Dilingavuv.	373
lizards. So one day when the old woman went into the
garden to work and to bring back food for the three of them,
she said to those two, Don’t you go there! and they an-
swered, Very well, we shall not go. And she went out of the
house, and went into the gardens, and those two brothers
played with their bows, shooting lizards. After a while one
said to the other, It would be a good thing to go and see
what it is where the old woman has forbidden us to go.
Very well, said the other, let us go; so they went, and they
saw that via leaf and the water in it. Then they saw a
lizard sitting on a part of that leaf, and one of them shot at
it, but missed the lizard and hit the leaf, and the water that
was in it burst quickly forth. And the old woman heard it,
and perceived that those two had probably shot the leaf. And
she stood up and cried with a loud voice, Iiorodali bulu, /ioro-
dali bulu! and twice again, Bali ure, dali are! (Pour round
about and meet! Round about the world!) And thus the
sea for the first time stood full around the whole world, for
before that they say there was no sea. So the old woman
you may say made the sea herself.
III. JFONBER TALES.
x. The Story of Dilingavuv. Torres Islands.
They were living in their place, and his companions made
a garden, and planted bananas in it. When the bananas bore
fruit and ripened Dilingavuv went every day and ate bananas
in their garden, not eating on the ground, but climbing into
the trees and eating. After a while he was discovered; one
of the party went into the garden and saw him up in a banana-
tree eating; so he ran and told the others. Says he, You
fellows, I have seen the one who steals and eats our bananas.
Then said Maraw-hihi, ITew out bows for us to go and shoot
and kill him. Rut they said, Marawhihi, no one will be able
to shoot and kill him. I will shoot him and kill him, said
Marawhihi. It is wholly impossible, said they. However374
Stories.
[ch.
they hewed out bows, each for himself, and put points to their
arrows; and when that was done Marawhihi said, Let us go
after him one by one. So one went first, and came to the
garden, and saw him sitting up in the banana-tree, and went
on tiptoe towards him to shoot him. But Dilingavuv stretched
out his arms like a bat, and the man was afraid, and ran back
and told the others. It can't possibly be done, said they. But
Marawhihi said that one must go again, and another went,
and the same thing happened again. Thus they all went in
turn, and came back and disputed with Marawhihi, saying, It
can’t possibly be done. Then said Marawhihi, I shall do it
myself, I shall shoot him and kill him. And this Marawhihi
they say was more clever than them all; and he went last and
saw Dilingavuv sitting in the banana-tree, and he stepped
along on tiptoe under the banana, and when Dilingavuv
stretched out his arms he was not frightened at him; but he
shot him with a bird arrow of casuarina wood, and hit him on
the ear, and shot it right off; and he fell headlong to the
ground. So Marawhihi ran and told his friends; but Dili-
gavuv got up from under the banana and went home to his
mother. "When he reached his mother’s house, he called to
her within, and she answered him and said, What is it, mv
son? And he said, Give me an axe. And his mother said,
What are you going to do with it ? But he deceived her, and
did not tell her that Marawhihi had shot his ear off. Then he
went and cut. another ear for himself out of the root of a tree,
and the name of that tree is the Rate, and as he was chopping
the Raw root, he said, Chop in pieces! chop asunder! But
Marawhihi had sent one of his men who went and listened,
and heard him saying this, Chop in pieces! chop asunder!
and he ran back and told Marawhihi that Dilingavuv was
chopping himself out an ear in place of the other. After this
Marawhihi and his men made a feast and danced, and danced
every day. And when Dilingavuv heard of it, he said, I will
go and have my revenge. So he gathered a great cpiantity of
Tahitian chestnuts, and took fire, and collected stones, and
took a dancing cloak of leaves, and went to them. But he did375
xix ]	Dilingavuv. The Eel.
not go right up to them into the open, but stayed beside the
village. Then he made up a fire and roasted his chestnuts,
and heated the stones, and dug a very deep hole and covered
over the mouth of it with the dress of leaves ; and so he sat
and watched them dancing. Before long as they were
dancing one of them fell out to take breath ; and when he
saw Dilingavuv sitting and eating chestnuts, he called to him
to give him one. Bun over here, says Dilingavuv; so he runs
over to him, and sits down on this dancing dress; and as he
throws himself down to sit he goes clean down into the hole.
And Dilingavuv played the same trick to all the company at
that dance, and let them all down into that one pit, and
Marawhihi last of all. Then he took the stones that he had
heated over the fire, and threw them down into the hole to kill
the men with heat; but as he threw them down Marawhihi said
to his companions, Come round over to this side of the pit, and
they did so, and not one of them was killed. But Dilingavuv
went home thinking he had killed them all. Then Maraw-
hihi said to his men, Do you know how we shall save our
lives ? and they answered, We are all dead already. Not at
all, said he, I know very well that we shall not die. Then
Marawhihi cast up his eyes out of the mouth of the pit, and
saw a banyan branch bending over the pit; and he said, Let
us her galgalaput at that banyan branch (shoot one arrow
after another, making each one strike and fix itself into the
one before it). And they did so ; and the reed-shafts of the
arrows they had shot reached down to them into the pit.
Then said Marawhihi, Climb up along the shafts ; and they
said to him, You first, and we after you. So he climbed
up on the line of arrows and got out of the pit, and so they all
saved their lives.
2. A Story about an Eel. Vanua Lava.
They were living in their place, and they were planting
their gardens; and one day when they went to plant, a boy
said to his father and mother, To-morrow when you go again,376
Stories.
[ch.
you will put by a yam for me. Next morning bis father
and mother went, and put by a yam for him ; and be roasted
it and ate it, and then went and asked some other boys for
more. But they scolded him, and said to him, What! has
your father gone and not left you anything to eat ? They
gave me some, he said, but I have eaten it all up. Why
then do you ask for our food too ? they asked ; but he cried
and said, Very well! I will tell mother and father by and
bye that you have scolded me. When his father and mother
came hack, he said to them, When you both left me I ate
up all my food, and went and begged some of theirs, and
they were very angry with me ; so to-morrow when you go
again to plant you are to put two yams for me. Next
morning they two went planting again, and put two yams
for the boy; and when he had roasted them he went and
followed a stream, and found a nice place, and sat down to
eat. As he was eating, crumbs of food fell into the water,
and an Eel came out and ate, and turned into a man, and
rose up and came to the boy. When they two had eaten
all the yam, the Eel said to the boy, To-morrow you will
roast two yams again, and bring them here, and we two will
eat them. After that the boy went home, and the Eel went
back into the water ; and the boy said to his father and
mother, To-morrow when you go you must put two yams for
me ; and in the morning they put for him two yams. He
roasted them, and took them in his hand, and went to his
place and ate ; and the Eel came out again. When they
had finished eating the Eel said to the boy, Let us anoint our
heads. So they dressed their heads and adorned themselves,
and went into the garden, and helped the people who were
digging the ground. But when that Eel dug the ground all
the people crowded to see him do it; some went back to their
digging, but the women would not do their work, and their hus-
bands were exceedingly angry with the Eel, and rushed upon
him, and would have killed him ; but the boy who came with
him poured water on him, and he turned into an Eel again.
And they caught hold of him, but he escaped; and theyXIX.]
377
Molgon and Molwor,
missed their hold upon him over and over again, and he
jumped into the water. So they said, All right, we will
make rain for him ; and they made a great rain, and the
water swelled into a flood and carried the Eel to the beach.
When the flood subsided they went down and found the Eel
lying on the beach, and they cut him into short pieces, and
left him. But the boy, his brother, ran down and saw the
Eel lying there, and wept; and his tears fell upon the Eel,
and he turned into a man again, and stood up and said to
his brother, You are to go up inland and tell your father and
mother that you three are to go and take up your abode
in another island. The boy therefore said to his father and
mother, We three are to move to another island. After they
had gone, one day an old woman was sitting, and she heard
the Eel singing a song; and she said to the people, Listen
to that singing a song like the Eel ; but some of them
answered, It is not that, the Eel is dead; but they heard
plainly the Eel’s voice, and said, It is true, it is the
Eel’s voice. And when he had finished singing they heard
a loud report; and as they were sitting a very great surf
rose and swept them away, all of them ; and they all died,
and that island was entirely lost.
3. Molgon and Molwoe. Vanda Lava.
The father and mother of these two brothers, who lived at
Gaua, said to the elder of them, Molgon, you are to look well
after him, the younger one, and feed him well. All right, he
said ; and then their father and mother died. They two lived
on ; and one day they drew down a canoe, and paddled up the
course of a stream, and came upon apalalco fruit floating down it.
They broke it in two and ate it. They paddled on and there
came floating down two, one for one of them to eat, one for
the other; they paddled on and three came floating down,
one for one, one for the other, and one they broke in two;
they paddled on and four came floating down, two for one,
two for the other; they paddled on and five came floating378
Stories.
[ch.
down, two for one, two for the other, and one they broke in
two ; they paddled on and six came floating down, three for
one, three for the other; they paddled on and seven came
floating down, three for one, three for the other, and one they
broke in two; the}7 paddled on and eight came floating down,
four for one, four for the other; they paddled on and nine
came floating down, four for one, four for the other, and one
they broke in two; they paddled on and ten came floating
down, five for one, five for the other; they paddled on and
saw the source from which the fruits had floated down.
Then the first-born said to the younger, You sit here, and 1
will go and gather for us both to eat. So he went and
gathered fruit. But a woman, Roprialal, came out of her
house, and looked down to where he was standing, and
called him. He went to her, and she said to him, We two
will cook food in the oven ; and they two cooked food in the
oven, and afterwards they ate. He could not eat all the qeta,
caladium, and he said to her, I will go with this to my
brother, that he may eat it; but the woman said, If you can’t
eat it all, throw it outside for the pigs ; and he cried. Then
they made a mash, and he could not eat it all, and said to her,
I shall take this for my brother to eat. But the woman said,
Throw it outside to the pigs; and he cried. Then she asked
him, What is your name ? and he said, Molgon. And what
is the name of that fellow over there ? and he said, Molwor.
And she said, Aia! true enough! your name is Molgon,
Go-catch, and you have come here and have caught on to the
pigs which belong to you and me, and the house, and the
gamal, and the food, and the money; but he, his name is
Molwor, Go-clear, and he has come here to be clear of all the
goods of you and me. And he cried and cried. Then the
woman said, Get up, let us go and see him ; and they went
over and found him dead, lying in the canoe, for the sun had
smitten him dead with its rays. And he cried and cried, and
his fears dropped on his brother’s breast, and he came to life
again, and said to him, Brother, our father when he died told
you to take care of me, but you have gone away to eat andXIX.]
379
The Ghost-wife.
have not thought of me ; and he went on talking. But the
woman stood and urged him, saying, Come here ! we two
will go up away from him again. Then as Molwor spoke to
him, Molgon wept wonderfully; and when he had finished
speaking, Mol wor sang a song to him, and got down from the
canoe, and put his legs into the water, and began to turn into
an eel ; and when he had quite finished his song1 he plunged
into the water, and his brother who had been standing by
leapt down also into the water. And the woman stood and
looked down, and blood came up from the water. And they
two turned into stones lying in the water-course; and the
woman stood and wept greatly, and went back again up the
hill.
4. The Ghost-wife. Mota.
A story to tell. They were living and living in their
place; a famine prevailed. And there was a woman and her
son, and they both were hungry. After a time the mother
went to dig qauro, wild yams, for them to eat, and when she
had finished digging the qauro she would return to her son in
the village ; and as she went she found a gaviga (Malay apple)
tree in fruit, in a deserted garden, and she put down her
basket, and took a stick with a crook and pulled down the
branches of the gaviga with it, and then she gathered with her
hands and ate. And when she had finished eating she put
some seeds into her basket; and as she went along she broke
the tips of the branches to mark the path. And when she had
arrived at the village she said to her son, Take the things out
of our basket; and he took them out one by one, and as he
took them out he found the gaviga seeds in the basket which
his mother had put there. Then says her son to her, What
is this you have been eating, and have put the seeds in the
basket for me to see ? And his mother says, Where ? And
her son takes out the gaviga seeds. Then says his mother to
him, Esi ! I don’t know ; somebody I suppose has put them
there. But he says, No ! you have been eating them to-day,Stories.
[ch.
380
because I see plainly that the seeds are still moist. So he
presses his mother hard to tell him ; and his mother tells
him. And it was already evening, and she says to him, As
you go along you will see a little path where the branches
have their tips broken down, and you will pass through there
and come out (upon the tree). So he follows the word his
mother gave him ; and as he goes along the sun is setting,
but he arrives at the gaviga-tree and climbs up. And when
he had climbed up to eat it was dark. Then he sees some-
thing flying to him on the gaviga and settling. Then says
the ghost to the living man, Where do you come from ? And
the man says to him, It is not as you suppose. Mother came
here to dig qauro and she found this gaviga, and then she
went home and told me, and after that I came here. Then
said the ghost to him, She is my sister to be sure, and my own
nephew are you ; come here and let me hide you, because we are
many of us now coming here to eat gavigas. So he takes him
and makes him sit down in the hollow of the gaviga; and
his uncle sat over the mouth of the hollow of the gaviga in
which the man was. Then while he is in the hollow he hears
a whirring sound coming, like birds, and settling on the top
of the gaviga. Then says the man to the ghost his uncle,
What is this? And he says to him, They are here already,
some ghosts who are come to eat gavigas, and if you hear
them buzzing in talk together don’t be afraid, and don’t let
your bones quake, here am I with you. So he sits within;
and his uncle looks about, and sees two gavigas in a bunch, and
says to another ghost, Pluck those two for me. And he gives
them to him, and he eats one and gives the man the other.
And he went on doing so for him till daylight; and when the
day was dawning and some of the ghosts were taking flight
he says to a damsel among them, Don’t be in a hurry to fly
o(f, you and I will fly together ; and she says, Very well. But
when they had all the lot of them taken flight, and it was clear
daylight, the ghost says to the man, Well now, come out;
and he comes out from the hollow of the gaviga-tree. Then
says the ghost his uncle to him, Well, here is a damsel forXIX.]
The Ghost-wife.	381
your wife. And the man says to the ghost, Ah, I don’t
know! will she he agreeable or not ? And his uncle says,
She agrees. Then the female agreed with the man, and they
two went back into the village. And when the two arrived
at the village his mother asked him, Where is that woman
from ? And he says, She is m37 wife ; Uncle gave her to me.
And she says, Who is Uncle? And he says, Your brother of
course, who died long ago; when I went to eat gavigas and
it was night I saw him fly first to me, and he put me in the
hollow of the gaviga. Then says his mother, Very well, we
three will live here, and she may live with you; so the three
lived together. And as the three lived together those two
worked for yams and taro and tomago and hibiscus; and as
they were working so her husband appointed the time for his
sv.qe, and appointed five days. And they waited counting
the days, and when it came to the fifth day he went off, and
he said to his wife, You two are not to come, you and our
child ; you two go into the garden and weed away the grass
from the taro, and when you have finished weeding go to the
other part where it is ripe, and pull up for yourselves, and
come back here. And she did so ; and when she had finished
weeding she took up their child on her hack; hut as the two
came near the taro the woman stretched out her hand to pull
some up, and there was a bunch of taro already in her hand ;
and she put it aside; and if she touched a hibiscus plant to
pluck the leaves, behold, a bundle of hibiscus leaves again in
her hand ; and if she essayed to lay hold on sticks for fire-wood,
there was a faggot of fire-wood already in her hand; and the
two went home. And they two come back into the village,
and light a fire for their oven, and do the necessary work
about it, and cover it in. And she opens it, and then her
husband comes back and asks her, Where have you two been ?
And she says, In our garden. Then he says, But who gave
you taro ? And he says, But I have seen that belonging to us
still untouched. Then she says, Not so ; it was taken in our
garden. Then he says again, Esi! perhaps I did not observe
exactly. So they waited again five days for the rank of Qoro-3§2
Stories.
[CH.
qorolava; and when it comes to that day he goes away again
from those two; and he makes the same arrangements and
goes away. After that she takes her child up on her back,
and goes with it to the yam garden; and when they have arrived
there she puts down her child and works at weeding. And
when she has weeded all the place she does again as before;
if she essays to dig a yam for their food, and she lays hold on
the leaf of the yam, there is a tuber already in her hand ; and
if she essays to pluck hibiscus leaves, they are in her hand
already; and if she essays to take a cocoa-nut, there is a cocoa-
nut already in her hand. And the evening draws on, and the
two go home; and her husband comes home and sees them, and
asks them, What have you two eaten ? And she says, We two
have been in our garden working, and have dug a yam for
our food, and plucked hibiscus leaves, and taken cocoa-nuts.
But her husband says to her, Not so; I have been into our
garden and have seen one thing, but I have not seen at all
that a yam has been dug, not at all; and no cocoa-nut has
been taken. And the woman says to him, Not so; we two
certainly have got the food in our garden. But the man
says, Not so; there is some one else probably who has given
it to you. And she says, Who is there that will trouble
himself about us ? he will be a ghost, I suppose! And he
says, Tell me who gives these things to you. Who should it
be that would give me anything ? says she. And the man
says, No! tell me the truth. Then the woman says to him,
Well! come along, we three will go into our garden. So the
three set out and went and arrived ; and the woman says to
him, Well! look here, you are angry with us, but you may
see for yourself. Then she touches taro, and it was as before,
and yams, and it was so. Then the man says, Not so ; some
one else has been giving you things. But as he says thus he
lays hold on a stick and beats her, and says, You don’t belong
down here below, you belong above the sky. What have
you been doing here ? Get back into your own country.
And she says, Very well, I will soon go back into my own
country. And one day after again he beat her and went off.XIX.]
Ganviviris.
And when she has seen that he is g-one she gathers banyan
leaves into a heap, and sets fire to them, and they burn.
Then she says to her child, Sit here, and I will go to the
other side of the fire ; and she goes to the other side of the fire,
and the smoke goes straight up into the clouds, and the
child’s mother goes up in it; and her child cries beside the
fire, and she goes on up into the clouds x.
5. Ganviviris. Mota.
The story about what Ro Som did for Ganviviris is not an
old one ; he was a man whom my father’s grandfather and
his friends had seen ; he was an orphan, his father was dead,
and his mother too was dead, and he lived with his mother’s
brother. And his uncle did nothing for him in the suqe
club, he still remained an avlava, because he was an idle
fellow, and whenever they called him to go to work he would
refuse, and when they were all gone inland to the gardens he
would go down to the beach to shoot fish, and do nothing
else day after day. But one day when they had called him to
work and were all gone, he took his bow and went down to
Ngerenow, and there he saw a samna slowly swimming along
and rolling from side to side quite close to him ; and he took
an arrow tipped with casuarina wood, and drew his how to
shoot. And just as he was releasing the string he heard a
voice inciting him and saving, Let fly! Let fly! And he
drew down his arrow from the bow-string, thinking it was a
1 Here the MS. ends. The story goes on to relate that the man found
his child crying for its mother beside the fire, and refusing to be comforted.
He sought help from all the birds and living creatures, but none would listen
to him till he came to the Spider, mciratva, who readily undertook to bring
the child to its mother. He spun a line from earth to heaven, took the man
and the child on his back and carried them safely up. A feast was going on
in heaven, and the two sat down in the circle of spectators. The men were
dancing round the drum, and the women tramping round in pairs. Each
time the mother passed the child it cried out Mother ! She stopped at last
and asked, Who is that cries Mother! to me ? Recognizing her child and
husband she agreed to return, and the Spider carried all three of them safe back
to the earth.3§4
Stories.
[CH.
man, and he turned his head again and again to looh behind
him to see who it was, hut there was no man. And he drew
again, and heard again the voice inciting him ; and he looked
again, for he still thought it was a man. And the third time
he drew his bow, and heard the voice, and loosed the string
and hit the sauma. And he ran down and caught the fish by
the tail, and threw his arms round it; but the fish struggled,
throwing itself about, and carried him off into a dry cave,
which was, they say, the dwelling of Ro fSom (Money). And
Ganviviris cried aloud, but the sauma turned into a woman, and
said, Don’t cry, it is I who have had pity on you. I have
seen you every day, and now I am going to do you a service.
You shall go back; and when you go home you are to tell
your uncle to bid his wives plait bags for you, and let them
be ten, and make a chamber for yourself parted off from the
house, and hang up all the bags in the open ; and don’t eat
anything to-day. So Ganviviris dived out of the cave, and
went back into the village, and said to his uncle, Tata, tell
those three to plait me ten bags. And his uncle said to him,
What have you got belonging to you to stow in them ? You
are a penniless fellow, and one who never plants or gathers.
But he says, E! just let me have them plaited. So his
uncle said to his wives, You are to plait bags for Ganviviris.
And they three cried, E-o-o ! who is to listen to him, an
avlava, a fellow who does nothing at all? But his uncle said,
Plait them just to try what his nonsense means ; then we
shall see what sort of property he has got to stow in them.
So the three women plaited the bags. And in the night Ro
Som came to Ganviviris and said, Make haste to hang up
your bags. And next day he hung up the bags; and in the
night as he was lying down to sleep he heard the rafters
creak again because of the money which was filling the bags;
and he got up and felt one after another those ten bags,
every one quite full. And Ro Som said to him, Tell your
uncle to give you his third wife. So he spoke out to him
about it, and his uncle let him have one. And he said again,
Tala, let us break up fire-wood for the day after to-morrow.XIX.]
Ganviviris.
385
But his uncle said to him, What property have you got to
give for us to buy your rank with, you a penniless fellow
with nothing coming in ? And he says, Lend me some
money and a pig to make the first payments with ; hut this
he said to try him. And his uncle said to him, I shall not
consent to let you have any property of mine ; why should I?
you are an idle fellow. But he says, Tata, let us break up
fire-wood the day after to-morrow, and to-morrow we will go
into your gardens, and I will look for some taro there. So
they went to the gardens, and he said to his uncle, Put up a
yalako as a warning against taking anything from these
gardens. And his uncle said to him, You are putting a mark
upon a great quantity; what have you got of your own to pay
so great a price with ? And he says, You will pay the great
price. But he says, I shall not listen to you about my money
and my food. So they went back again into the village, and
all the people then heard of what had been done, and they
laughed at Ganviviris, saying that he would never be able to
eat his suqe rank. But next day they broke up fire-wood, and
he bought taro with a great price, with ten coils of money for
each garden. And his uncle said to him, You have bought
food with a great price ; you have succeeded in that, but you
have to give money all round for your snqe, where have you
got anything for that ? And he says, That will be your doing
of course. But his uncle had no wish to let him have his
money; so he says, Let us bring the taro to-morrow, and
crack almonds for the feast. And he said again to his
uncle, Tata, let your children twist some cords. So his two
children twisted, and his wives twdsted ; and the neighbours
asked his uncle saying, They are twisting cords, but where is
the pig there tied up by the house ? And he says, Esi! we have
never seen any belonging to him, he is a pauper. But in the
evening he went and got four pigs, and tied them up near the
village. And he ate on one d&j' the avirilc and the qatagiav.
And in the night Bo Som said to him, You are to take all
your ranks in the snqe here at Qakea ; you are not to take
any at Mota ; if you disobey my word in this you will die.386
Stories.
[CH.
And on the day he bought his rank he said to them, Have
you made all the return for my money? And they said, When
you have completed your distribution of property we will
make an end of our return; lest we should crush ourselves
into poverty. So he went and loosed and brought out two
rawe pigs and two hoars, and he went into his house and
carried out his money-hags on his hack, and with that he
made distribution; and they were amazed at those rawe and
boars, all of them with their tusks curled round till they met,
that Ro Som had given to him. And after five days again
they broke up fire-wood, and on the tenth day again he bought
his steps of rank, the avtagaiaga and the luwaiav. And on
the fifth day again they broke up fire-wood, and on the tenth
day he bought his steps, the tamasuria and the tavai suqe;
and on the fifth day again he said, Let us break up fire-wood,
and on the tenth day he bought the steps tavasuqelava and
Jcerepve. And always he was buying food with large pay-
ments, and he paddled over to Vanua Lava and bought with
large sums there, and to Mot.a and bought with large sums
there: and he went on in the suqe till he reached the weme-
teloa. Then he desired to make his suqe also at Mota, and he
went and built his house at Tasmate, and they broke up fire-
wood and danced the taqesara. But he appointed the tenth day
for a sawae, and on the ninth day he prepared mashed yams;
and at the sawae he appointed the tenth day for a kolekole.
And at the tcolekole, when the noise of the sawae was sounding
like thunder, and the feast was at its height, they saw a
woman walking up the sloping ground below the cliff, using
a spear for a walking stick, with bracelets on her arms reach-
ing to the elbow, and on her right arm a boar’s tusk, and her
head smeared with red earth, and pigs’ tails fastened to her
hair ; and they thought that some visitors had just landed
from a canoe. And she went straight to the house of Gan-
viviris and passed out of sight within it; and they went to
see who it was and found no one there. And they told Gan-
viviris, We have seen a woman go into your lcole house, with
bracelets and boars’ tusks on her arms; and he said, Don’tXIX.]
3§7
The Little Orphan.
mention it in the village. And he went up there to bring
out his money-bags on his back, and he saw that his ten bags
had nothing in them ; and he went outside and saw that all
his pigs were gone; his distribution of property came to
nothing at all. And when the evening was dark, and Gan-
viviris was sleeping in his house, they heard him cry out,
and they asked him, What ails you ? And he said, Esi!
there is something, but I don’t know what it is, that has
happened to me. And he began to sicken on that very night,
and on the fifth day he died.
6. The Little Orphan. Mota.
A story to tell. They were living in their place, the boys
were growing up, and their father and mother said to them,
Go down to the beach, and catch fish with hook and line for
us, and we two will go inland and get vegetables for us all
to eat with them. And they said, Very well; and the two
went up to the garden, and they went down to the beach.
And as they were going along the path the Little Orphan said.
Let me go with you. But they said E-o-o! not you, a little
orphan, we will go by ourselves alone, we who are children of
fathers; if you were to go with us what would you eat?
You have no father, you have no mother, who will give you
food to eat with your fish ? And they went first, and the
Little Orphan behind. And those the children of fathers
went down to the beach, and the Little Orphan went down
a steep place eastwards to the landing-place at Sanwawa;
and there he fishes for himself with a line and hook. And
when he sees those others mounting back into the island,
he also strings his fish together and mounts back himself;
and he comes near to them, and they say, Don’t come together
with us, you have no father and no mother to give you
vegetable food to eat your fish with. So they mount up,
and they before and he behind. But they go on the way
homeward, and he stops short, and goes into his cave
and roasts his fish. And when he has roasted them he takes
C c %388
Stories.
[ch.
his fish up together and goes out, and goes out down to the
beach, and sits down, and dips his fish into a little pool of
salt-water, and eats them by themselves without any vegetable
food. After this on another day they went again; and the
Little Orphan says, I will go with you ; and they say, No, we
have already said that you the Little Orphan are not to come.
If you come with us, and you catch fish, what have you to
cat with them1? you have no food to eat your fish with. And
they went before and he went after ; and they went to their
place, and he to his. And he fishes with his hook and line
and keeps his eye upon them; and when he sees them
mount up inland, he also mounts up himself. And they say
to him, Don’t, we tell you, be coming along with us; if you
come here who is there to give you food ? you have no father
and no mother to give you food to eat your fish with. And
they go on into the village, and he stops short, and roasts
again his fish and eats them without vegetable food. After
this on another day again they went; and he said, Let me
g*o with you ; but they said, You are not to go, we only
shall go who have fathers and have mothers, you are not
to come, a little orphan. And they went again before, and
he behind, and they to their place and he to his. And as he
stood down there, a fish comes on his hook first, and he runs
up on the rocks and takes it off the hook ; and runs and
lets down his hook into the water, and a iapanau is caught,
and he takes it up, and runs up and puts it down into a little
pool. And he runs over again and lets down his hook and a
nongpitpit is caught; and he runs up and puts it down into
the pool; and runs over and lets down his hook and a gavaru
is caught, and he goes with it and puts it down into the pool,
and runs over and lets down his hook, and a plaited hibiscus
line (gavaru) is caught by him; and he goes up with it and puts
it down. And he runs over to let down his hook, and a woman
and her child come up out of the sea to him ; and their name
is Ro Som (Money), and he puts them down on the reef.
Then Ro Som says to him, Let us three go together. And
the Little Orphan says, E-o-o ! not you two ; I will go byxix.]	The Little Orphan.	389
myself. But she says, No, we three. But the Little Orphan
says, No, you two must not; I shall go by myself, because
I have no food to feed you with. But she says, Never mind,
string our fish together and we three will go. So the three
■went along and arrived at the Little Orphan's dwelling-place ;
and he looks and sees a house and a gamal; and he asks her,
Whose house is this ? and whose gamal is this ? And Ro Som
says to him, It is the house of us three, and your gamal. So
they three enter into the house, and sit down. And Ro Som
says to the Little Orphan, Come now, cook the fish for us
three to eat. But he says What is there ? What are we
going to eat the fish with ? I told you that you two must
not come with me ; I have no food. But she says, Cook
the fish, we three will eat them with some vegetable food
presently. So he makes up a fire for the fish, and puts hot
stones inside them and wraps them in leaves, and puts them
on the fire, and the three sit down and wait. Then Ro Som
says to him, Now then, take down our fish. And he says,
What are we to do ? What are we going to eat them with, I
mean ? And she says, Look, there is a heap of cooked food
there for us to eat the fish with. So he goes over to the fish,
and takes them off the fire, and they three ate. And when
they had finished eating he goes out of the house into the
village and sees gardens, a banana garden, and atoniago garden,
and a yam garden, a ivowosa garden, a weswes garden, a
sugar-cane garden ; and the bananas were beginning to rot,
and the tomagos were sprouting afresh, and the yams were
sprouting, and the reeds were throwing up flower stalks, and
the qeta were beginning to rot. Then he said to his mother,
Oh, mother, whose gardens are these here ? And Ro Som
says, They belong to us three only; and she says to him,
To-morrow you will make up fires in the gamal in every oven,
and we' two will be here in the house, and we three will make
mixture of cooked food and scraped cocoa-nut for food for pigs.
And says the Little Orphan, Very well, but what are we to
feed with it ? But she says, Just get to work about it. So
they two cooked a quantity of food in the oven inside the390
Stories.
[ch.
house, and he also cooked a quantity in the gamal; and the
pigs’ food made by the two in the house was a hundred baskets-
full and that in the gamal a hundred. And as soon as they
covered in the ovens the food was cooked. And the Little
Orphan mixed the food for his part in the gamal, and
Som and her child mixed for their part in the house;
and when the three have finished mixing, they take the food
out into the village place, and the Little Orphan puts his
down on a stone, and Som and her child put theirs down
at the door of the house. And Ro Som says, Well now, call
the pigs, sum-sum; and the Little Orphan gets up and sumsums,
and he hears continued squealing, and he sees boars with
tusks that curl and meet, and raioe with tusks that curl
and meet, and sows ; these all come rushing out to the three,
and the three feed them and they eat. And while they are
eating, Ro Som says to him, Have you got any uncle on your
mother’s side ? And he says, I have an uncle, but he does
not come to look after me, and he gives me no food. Then
said Ro Som, Run and say to him, Tata, come and make the
payments for mjr steps in the suqe. So the wife of the uncle
of the Little Orphan saw him coming, and she said to the
people, Drive that boy away that is coming here; who is
there to attend to him, and give him food? Then says the
Little Orphan, Tata! And his uncle says 0-e! what is it?
And he says, Come out here. So his uncle came out to him;
and he says, Tata, pray come to me to pay, sar, for my steps.
And his uncle says, Oh, but if I pay that, what will you vile
jnilai, return payment, with ? And his nephew says, Come let
us go. So the Little Orphan led the way, and his uncle
came behind, and they went on. And when they arrived
beside the Little Orphan’s village, his uncle sees a place where
pigs have been rooting, and he says, Ah ! these pigs’ lootings,
whose are they ? And he says, Mine to be sure. But he says,
Oh, I dare say! Where are you going to get pigs from to
be your property ? Then he sees also a garden, and he says,
Whose is this yam garden ? and he says, Mine. And his uncle
says, I’ll beat you for saying it; but he looks about andxix.]	The Little Orphan.	391
the bananas are rotting, and the caladinm is rotting, and
the tomagos are sprouting. And then he sees a house and
says, But whose house is this ? and whose gamal is this ?
And the Little Orphan says, My house and my gamal. And
his uncle says, But how is it that you have got these ? Who
is there who will assist you and give you thatch ? And the
Little Orphan says to his uncle, Well, let those people give
the first money, vene, for the avrik. And his uncle says to
the people, Come, give in your money to begin with, I will
star, pay back, to you. And all the people say, You fellows!
how is it ? What has he got to return with ? He has no
money. But his uncle makes the first return, sar, payment
to them, and when he had paid them all, the Little
Orphan gives money for his uncle’s property; and he says
again, Tata, make payment again to them for the qatagiav.
And they vene to his uncle, and he makes the full return
to them all, and his nephew returns his property to him,
pigs and money. And he says to his uncle again, Pay,
sar, them again for the av tagalaga, and he pays; and
when he has paid them all, his nephew makes the return of
his property, gives pigs and money And he says again to his
uncle, Tala, let those people again make, vene, their contribu-
tion of money for the luwai av, and they make it; and his
uncle repays them ; and when he has paid them all, his
nephew runs up into the house, and brings money out on his
back, and makes the return of his property to his uncle. And
that food that they ate would never come to an end; they
made one cooking of it, and they still went on eating it for
rank after rank in the suqe; they eat, and they stay at it
right through like that. Afterwards he says again to his
uncle, Well now, pay them again for the tamasuria, and he
pays them again; and his nephew runs up again, and brings
out again on his back bags of money, and gives pigs, and
makes return of his property to his uncle. And the people
still remain ; and he says again to his uncle, Tata, pay them
again for the tavai suqe; and he pays again ; and when he
has paid them all, his nephew runs up and goes into the392
Stories.
[CH.
house, and carries out money again on his hack, and gives
pigs and rawes, and makes return of his uncle’s property.
And he says, Tata, pay again for the kerepue; and he pays,
and his nephew brings money, and pigs, and rawes, and gives
them to his uncle. And he says again, Tata, pay them for the
mele; and he pays ; and his nephew runs up and goes into the
house and carries out money, and gives pigs and rawes, and
makes return of his uncle’s property. And that money will
never come to an end, because his mother was llo Som (i. e.
Money); and she sits in the house and is hard at work multi-
plying that money. And he says again, Tata, pay them again
for the tetug\ and he pays; and his nephew runs up and goes
into the house, and carries out money, and gives pigs and
rawes, and makes return of his uncle’s property. And he
says again, Tata, pay them again for the lano; and he pays
them ; and his nephew makes return of his property again.
And he says again, Tata, pay them for the qorqorolava ; and
he pays ; and his nephew makes return of his property, brings
pigs, and brings rawes, and makes return again to his uncle.
And thus it went on till he rose to the top, till he ate right
through all the ranks of the suqe. After that he says to his
uncle again, Tata, let us two make a lcolekole; and his uncle
says, Very well. And he makes a kotekole for a stone, a sewere,
makes one for an image, nule, makes one for a cjamal, makes
one for a wenereqoe, pig’s tail, makes one for a wetapup,
chicken’s feathers, makes one for a sarlano, a hat, makes one
for a liwan tamate, figure of a ghost, all those kolekoles of
every sort and kind he accomplished. After that his nephew
made a return of his property; he returned, went on re-
turning, returned to the uttermost his uncle’s property.
And his uncle killed pigs for him ; killed for the seicere,
killed for the nule, killed for the gamal, killed for the u'enere-
qoe, killed for the wetaqrup, killed for the kolevat, the stone,
killed for the qatqatmemea, the red head, killed for the sarlano,
killed for the liwantamate. And when he had finished killing,
his uncle commanded the people of his village to take his
pigs, and his rawe, and his money, to carry away; to carryxix.]	The Little Orphan.	393
away his pigs, and to carry away his rawe, and to carry away
his money. And his uncle went up to the door of the house,
and said to his wives, Come along, get up you two, we three
will go home ; one of you will lead a pig with a line, one of
you will carry a bag of money on her hack. But they said
to him, No ! go home yourself, we two are going to stay and
marry your nephew, the Little Orphan. And he says, Not
so, you two cannot marry him because formerly you used
contemptuous language to him ; has he become good again ?
no, he is bad. I wanted to give him food, but you two
forbade it, and I was prevented giving him food; and I
wanted to go and look after him, but you two forbade it, and
my going to see him came to nothing; and if you two are
to make advances to him, is he good again ? no, he is bad.
You two could not eat, when you saw him it made you sick,
and you two can’t live with him. But they said, Not at all,
you go home by yourself, we two are going to stay with him.
Then his uncle says, No, get up both of you, we three are to
go home. But they two say, No, you go home by yourself.
Then says he, Who is it you two here are going to marry ?
You two can’t live with him, the object of your scorn. Then
they two get up and the three go home together. And the
Little Orphan goes into the house, and makes a fire, and puts
pig’s flesh into the oven to make it keep. And when he has
finished with his pig, then comes a report of a voyage, that
the Motalava people with the Losalava people are going to
paddle over to Gaua. Then says the Little Orphan to his
mother, Oh, mother, those people are going to paddle over to
Gaua to-morrow, and may I ? And his mother says, You
must not; stay and look after your meat in the oven. But
he says E-0-0! not so, mother, I shall go on the voyage with
them; I am going to them, and you two will cook my pig
for me. So it was night and morning ; and when morning
was come he goes up inside the house and speaks to his
mother and says, Well, mother, as I am going away from you
two, and you two stay here, there is that heap of food you are
to eat; but these you are not to touch. And he goes off, and394
Stories.
[ch.
they start on their voyage. And when he reaches the landing-
place, he sees that those people have already dragged down
the canoe and set it afloat on the edge of the sea; and he
runs and jumps up and climbs right up on board the canoe,
and the}' paddle off. But they all of them had taken pigs
with them, but the Little Orphan had not taken one for
himself, and he had brought nothing but a cockle-shell in his
hand, and that shell-fish was not opened. And when they
brought the canoes to shore at Gaua, the people there came
down to meet them, and one of them runs over and cries,
Friend ! and touches his friend’s hand, and the two go up the
beach together ; and some other runs down and cries, This is
my friend, and touches his hand, and they two walk up
together; and some other runs down and cries, This is my
friend, and takes him, and they two walk up ashore ; but
that poor Little Orphan, they don’t want to be friends with
him. And they stay and stay, and the wind rises, and they
are to start on their voyage ; and they set off and paddle, pad-
dle on, and go out at Losalava. And when those people drag
up their canoe (at Mota), he runs back, runs and runs, and
reaches the house where they three lived, and goes straight
inside the house, and sees the heap of yams still remaining as
it was; and he says, What have you two been eating? this
food still remains untouched. And they two say, We have
been eating it to be sure, that food. But he says, No, there
is some other man I think has been bringing you wild food of
the forest. Now he makes a fool of himself in this, supposing
that it was as if his mother were living with a man. But
that female Ro Som wept exceedingly because he had been
angry with her, and she and her child wept till the sun went
down. Then the Little Orphan goes near to them, and lies
upon their legs, and tries to console them, but can’t succeed ;
and they cried on, till they heard the nose of the Little
Orphan whistling in sleep, and then they removed softly
their legs, and put down his head on the ground ; and they
run to the money-bags, and unloose the pig, and the two
run off. And as they went out that village turned into aXIX.]
The Little Orphan.	395
deserted g-arden. But as they ran away the old woman sat
down, the bags of money were very heavy upon her, and one
of the bags fell down. And a pig with tusks remained
tied at that landing-place at Sanwawa, and that money-bag
remained lying where it fell. And that Little Orphan woke
and jumped up, and there he was in a deserted garden, and he
ran looking for those two, and he came out upon the shore,
and sees an old woman sitting there and asks, Oh! have you
seen anybody at all here just now ? And she sings, Look, look
over there! Ioio ! ialo ! the two are plunging back into the
sea at the place where the Little Orphan had fished them up.
It is finished.
Note.—Two more Stories from Mota in native MS. are too long for insertion
in full. One is the Story of Wowut-ta-Taragaviga, whom his parents kept in
the house till he was grown up, and then advanced to the highest suqe rank.
Another man of the same island taking the same step sent a portion of his
feast to Wowut-ta-Taragaviga by an orphan, all others being afraid of
approaching the gamal of so high a rank. Wowut takes a liking to the
orphan, and pays him with money. He goes again and again with food till he
has * thousands of money, thousands of boars, thousands of pigs with curled
tusks,’ and with these advances himself to high suqe rank. Then Wowut
dies, and directs that when his friend comes to mourn over him he is to be
given his wife in memory of him. The other is the Story of Qat-wuruga, who
was born of a mother who had been killed by a fall from a tree, and grew up
in the forest like the children in the Story of Taso. His maternal uncle finds
him and takes him home, where his uncle’s wives neglect him and ill-use him,
and give him his name of Scurfy-head. The boy begs his uncle to take him
back to the forest, and he carries him out of the sight of the sea into the
midst of the island, Vanua Lava. Then he settles himself, and after a while
snares birds. One day the fat of a bird roasting over the fire fell through on
to the head of Wetopunpun beneath the earth, and he comes up above ground.
This is the boy’s father, the ghost of his dead father, or a Fin spirit. With the
charm ‘ Svso-punpun, Soso-punqmn’ (like the Kerembaembae of Story No. i) he
makes food, gardens, a village, a gamal, pigs, fowls, a drum—all native wealth.
Qat-wuruga’s uncle comes to see him, and undertakes his advance to the highest
ranks of the suqe, receiving his due payment of pigs. His wives, incredulous
at first, go to a Jcoleliole and see the youth they have despised in all his
splendour. They desire to stay as his wives, and make him cut open his
breast and give them some of his liver to eat. A canoe from Maewo comes
over, and they find the fresh emblems of his rank ; they challenge comparison
with their own, and see open-mouthed with astonishment the number of
jawbones of the pigs he has killed in his feasts. They beguile him to sleep,
and carry him off to their own island to kill and eat him. While they are396
Stories.
[ch.
7. The Woman and the Eel. Aurora.
A woman went to lay pandanus leaves to weave mats
with in the w7ater. and she laid them there in the evening and
went home. In the morning she went to take the leaves from
the water; and when she went to take them out, behold,
they were turned into an eel. Then she ran back and told it
to some men who were engaged in the suqe, and they ran
down and tied a cord to the eel and dragged it up to the
village. But there was a lame man who could not go with
them, and he lay in the gamal, club-house ; and by the side of
the gamal there was a croton-tree; and as they dragged up
that eel it curled its tail round the croton, and the croton was
nearly broken, and the lame man saw it. But they dragged
hard at the eel and it loosed its tail from the croton, and they
brought it into the village, and laid it at the entrance of the
gamal. So when they ran off for fire-wood and banana leaves
to cook it with, the eel said to the lame man, When they are
eating don’t you eat; they shall eat by themselves. Con-
sequently the lame man did not eat; but they put the eel to
he cooked in the oven of the suqe, and covered in the oven.
And when they opened the oven they all took up pieces of
the eel, every one of them a piece, and w'hen the great man
said to them, Now put them ready, then they all put them
ready; and after that he said again, Now let us eat, and they
all took a bite at once. But as they bit once their legs
turned into eels; and they hit a second time and the bodies
of them all turned into eels; and they bit again, and they
were all eels ; and the great man glided awTay first, and they
all followed him into the water.
making preparations for their dance and feast, one of their party takes pity on
him, unties and delivers him; the two paddle back to Vanua Lava. But
when they reach Qat-wuruga’s place all has disappeared. When he was
captured his father Wetopunpun had gone to the beach and sat there grieving.
The Qakea people, seeing him there day after day, paddled over and took him
to their place, where there was a famine. There with his charm ‘ Soso-punpun *
he makes gardens full of food to appear. They envy him and he leaves them,
and seeks a solitary place, where he sits down by the side of Ro Som with all
his possessions round him. A stone there representing him is a place of
sacrifice to this day.xix.] The Little Owl. The Winged Wife. 397
8. The Little Owl. Aurora.
This is about two women who were getting fire-wood, and
found a young owl, a bird with white feathers and very large
eyes; it was a young bird of this kind that they found.
And one day the two women went to look at their little bird,
and found that he was turned into a man ; so they took him
into the village, and he became their husband. And the
three lived always in perfect harmony together, and built
their house, and worked in their garden, and so remained
many years. But after that he took to beating them when
they quarrelled, and they scolded him for it, saying, You
there are a bird, and our property because we found yon;
why do you beat us like this? So he said he would leave
them ; and in the evening he drank kava, and forbade them to
blow the fire. But when he lay down to sleep the two
women blew up the fire into a blaze, and looked at him, and
he turned into a bird, and flew away. And the two women
cried after him, and he threw down money to them.
9. The W inged Wife. Aurora.
This is about the women that they say belonged to heaven,
and had wings like birds; and they came down to earth to
bathe in the sea, and when they bathed they took off their
wings. And as Qatu was going about, he chanced to see
them; and he took up one pair of wings and went back into
the village and buried them at the foot of the main pillar of his
house. Then he went back again and watched them. And
when they had finished bathing they went and took up their
wings and flew up to heaven ; but one could not fly because
Qat had stolen her wings, and she was crying. So Qat goes
up to her, and speaks deceitfully to her and asks her, What
are you crying for ? And she says, They have taken away my
wings. Then he takes her to his house and marries her.
And Qat’s mother takes her and they go to work; and when39§
Stones.
[ch.
the leaf of a yam touches her there are yams as if someone had
already dug1 them up, and if a leaf of a banana again had
touched her. just a single one, all the bananas were ripe at
once. But when Qat’s mother saw that things were so she
scolded her ; but not Qat; he was gone shooting birds. And
when Qat’s mother scolded her she went back into the village;
and she sits beside the post of the house and cries. And
as she cried her tears flowed down upon the ground and
made a deep hole; and the tears drop down and strike
upon her wings, and she scratches away the earth and finds
them, and flies back again to heaven. And when Qat was
come home from shooting he sees that she is not there, and
scolds his mother. Then he kills every one of his pigs, and
fastens points to very many arrows, and climbs up on the top
of his house, and shoots up to the sky. And when he sees
that the arrow does not fall back he shoots again and hits the
first arrow. And he shoots many times, and always hits, and
the arrows reach down to the earth. And, behold, there is
a banyan root following the arrows, and Qat takes a basket of
pig’s flesh in his hand and climbs up to heaven to seek his
wife. And he finds a person hoeing; and he finds his wife
and takes her back ; and he says to the person who is hoeing,
When you see a banyan root don’t disturb it. But as the
two went down by the banyan root and had not yet reached
the ground, that person chopped the root off, and Qat fell down
and was killed, and the woman flew back to heaven. That is
the end of it.
io. The Story of Taso. Aurora.
This is a story about Taso a man-eater. This Taso was a
man who ate men, and there was a woman, the sister of Qatu,
who was pregnant and near her time. Taso found her in the
garden ground, in a thicket, and killed her; but he did not
eat her, because she was pregnant and her time was nearly
come. She lay and rotted in the thicket, never having been
brought in for burial. And while this corpse of a womanXIX.]
Taso.
399
killed with a club, Qatu’s sister, was lying and rotting, her
two infants were alive, and as the mother rotted, it left them
free. So they lay, and they rolled along on the smooth
ground, and by and bye they grew strong. Then they found
dry leaves in which rain water had collected and they sipped
and drank ; and they came on to a root of qena (a gingi-
beraceous plant) and sucked it, for this qena has a swollen
lump at its root and water accumulates in a small hollow in it.
So they clung to the qena root till they were strong and
could move about, and then they began to wander, and made
their way out of the thicket. And as they so wandered along
they came to a place where there was a sow with young ; and
they sat and looked at her. Now this sow was the property
of their maternal uncle Qatu ; and they sat looking out for
the cocoa-nuts with which the sow was fed. After a while
their uncle Qatu came and sat down and called his sow, and
the sow came with her litter of pigs, and Qatu cut up their
food for them; and when he had cut it up> he did not sit there
till it was all eaten and then go ; he went away before that,
he turned his hack and went. Then these two came forth
and drove away the sow, and took from her the cocoa-nuts
that had been cut up to eat them themselves, and sat down
and ate. But the sow went up into the village and cried to
her owner Qatu. Next morning when he came down to feed
the sow they did the same thing; the sow went off to her
owner, and they gathered up the cut cocoa-nut in their arms
and took it off to eat it themselves. And Qatu saw that his
sow was always coming hack to him, and was thin without
any fat about her, and he asked himself, Why is it I wonder
that my sow comes back to me, as if I had not fed her, and is
not at all fat? Let me sit and observe what it is that makes
her come back to me up into the village. So after feeding her
he pretended to go back, but went round and returned that
he might see what it was that hapipened to his sow. And he
stood and watched them coming out, light in complexion,
wonderfully fair, as they came and stood and drove away the
sow to take her food. And Qatu jumped out, and called to400
Stories.
[CH.
them, What, is it you who are always driving away my sow ?
1 have seen her coming back to me. These two twins let the
food slip from their arms and stood ashamed, biting their
fingers. And Qatu asked them, Where do you come from?
And they told him how they lay and rolled and found their
way out of the thicket, and saw the water and drank it, and
came to the root of qtna and sucked it; and how when they
did so they grew strong, and saw the sow and filled their
bellies with the food the sow was eating. And Qatu under-
stood without mistake that these were the children of his
sister whom Taso had killed long ago.
Qatu called them and went up to the village and hid them
at the further end of his house; and he bade Ro Motari his
wife to go into the garden and dig some yams, and bring
hibiscus leaves, tender such as locusts eat, and come back to
make a yam-mash for the two twins. And Ro Motari did
so ; she went and gathered the leaves and dug the yams and
came back and made the lolco. And when the oven was closed
in Qatu bade Ro Motari to g’o and cut down cocoa-nut fronds
for mats, and plait and spread them, and to make up a
pillow. Then Qatu bids Ro Motari go to the further end of
the house ; and she goes and sees the two little twins sitting
at the further end of the house in the pig fence; and she runs
back and cries to Qatu, LUi ! Lili! What are those little ones
to me? my children, or my brothers, or my grandchildren?1
Qatu says to her, O-o-o! your grandchildren. So she took
them gladly into the house, she and Qatu, and gave them
food, and they stayed with him and Ro Motari. After a
while they grew big, and Qatu shaped bows for them made of
the rachis of the sago fronds ; and when they could shoot
lizards he broke the bows and took them from them, and made
different ones for them. And when they could shoot geckos
he took the bows away from them and broke them and shaped
1 In another version of the story, ‘ When Motari saw the two handsome
boys with their white hair, she liked them and asked Qatu, Are these my chil-
dren or my husbands? And Qatu said, Yes indeed, your husbands, for they
are my sister’s children/XIX.]
Taso.
401
different ones for them, and put points to their arrows. And
when they could both shoot the small birds tatagoras he took
the bows away and broke them, and made them bows much
larger than before, and put points to their arrows, and then
they could shoot doves. So they came to be able to shoot all
kinds of birds ; and then he cut clubs for them, and they killed
rats with them, and he took them away and broke them ; and
presently when they were full-grown youths he made clubs
for them again, for one a oi utu (Barringtonia fruit) with four
corners to it, for the other a simple tarara with a ring and
spike.
Qatu brought them up till they were cprite big, and then
one day he told them about Taso, saying that they were not
to go carelessly about or go where Taso was without due
cause, because he had killed their mother and was a man-eater.
When they had considered this they set a taboo upon a banana
belonging to them, and said to their uncle Qatu, If you go into
the garden and see our bunch of bananas beginning to ripen at
the top and ripening downwards to the end, Taso has killed us ;
but if 37ou see that it has begun to ripen at the end and is
ripening upwards we shall have killed him. So their uncle
turned his back and went his way, and the twins started off to
take Taso by surprise. They came to Taso’s place, but did
not find him there, because he had gone down to the beach to
sharpen bis teeth1; so the twins asked Taso’s mother, Where
is this Taso gone ? We have come here to see him. And
Taso’s mother called to them to come up and sit by the gamal
to wait for him, and they came up to the gamal and sat there
waiting for Taso. Now short round yams had been dug, and
a fire lighted in the gamal, and they heated the yams, and
pulled out the stones that lined the ovens, and put them on
the fire to pelt Taso with. There were two fire-places in the
gamal, at the one end and at the other. And Taso’s mother
came down from the house; and the old woman lay down on
the ground and sang a song, crying down to Taso on the beach.
This is the song : Taso ! sarosaro ganga tamale, a ganga i tuara,
1 A tooth of Taso is still to be seen at Maevvo.
D (I402
Stories.
[CH.
fjaku i tuara. Taso ! (Taso ! look out for your dead man to
eat, one for you, one for me. Taso!) Taso was sitting1 on the
beach, and heard his mother crying to him, and he got up and
came back along the path ; and as he came he turned his head
from side to side and struck the trees, and they came down
with a crash. But the twins had made ready for their attack
on Taso, red-hot stones and cooked yams, and they stood with
their feet firmly planted and waited for him inside the gamal,
one at the one end of it, and the other at the other. Then
they heard Taso come up and ask his mother, What is it,
mother ? And she said, What is it but dead men for us to
eat, sitting there in the gamal 1 So Taso went on and up to
the gamal, and as he got in over the rail at the door, one of
the twins took up a red-hot stone and threw it at him and hit
him, and when he ran down to the other end of the gamal, the
other twin threw at him and hit him. Taso cried out, It is
in vain that you throw at me, I will eat you both to-day.
As he runs to one end of the gamal one of the twins
throws at him, as he runs to the other the other throws; so
the}' g-0 on him till his bones shake within him, and he lies
down and only groans. Then the twins leap upon him and
beat him to death with their clubs. Then they go down to
the house and drag out the old woman, Taso’s mother, and
club her; they clubbed them both to death. Then they set
fire to the houses over them, and went back homewards. But
Qatu and Motari were standing in the garden listening to the
popping of the bamboo rafters as they burnt, and wondering
what was going on over there : ‘ Those two probably have
come across Taso and he is killing them.’ Qatu starts and
goes off, and as he goes he meets them, and they tell him that
they have killed Taso. And he said to them, I forbade you
to go there, you have disobeyed me and gone, and very nearly
he has eaten you. So it was finished; they killed Taso and
revenged their mother whom Taso had murdered.XIX.]
Betawerai.
403
11. About Betawerai a Snake. Aurora.
The beginning was in this way; a woman and her child
went to strip pandanus leaves for weaving mats, and the boy
saw a young snake on the stalk of a leaf and begged his
mother to let him have it for he wanted it; his mother forbade
him to take it. But he said that he wished for it, and so he
laid hold on the little red snake, and took it and put it in the
hollow trunk of a tree; and the name of that tree is the
uqava ; he put it into the hollow of that, and he used to feed it
with rats or birds or black lizards, or pig’s flesh, and that
snake became extremely large. And one day when he killed
a pig he went to give it some; but that snake snatched the
pig from him, and ate him up also, and crawled out of the
hollow tree, and came into the village and ate up all the
people in the place. But there was one pregnant woman who
survived; and she dug a pit, and took a thin flat stone and
laid it over the pit, and she stayed within it. And she
brought forth her children, twins, and they three remained in
that pit in the ground. And the snake ate up all the people,
and then went and took up its abode on a banyan-tree, and
brought forth exceedingly many young ones, and two the
chief among them. The name of one of these was Betawerai,
and this one was not able to go about, but stayed always on
a branch of the banyan. But we call the branch of a big
tree like a banyan tawerai, like the flat of the hand, and this
was named after that, Betawerai, At the branch. And the
other one used to go very far away seeking diligently men or
pigs to eat, and his name was Walolo. But one day those
two, the children of the woman who had lived in the ground,
begged of their mother to make them bows and arrows; and
after that they said they would go into the village and seek
that snake to shoot it and kill it. But when they had gone
and had seen from a distance that banyan where Betawerai
and Walolo lived, they saw upon the branches, and on the
little twigs, and on the leaves, nothing but snakes on that
d d 3404	Stories.	[ch.
banyan. But Walolo was not on the tree, because he had
gone across the sea and was still seeking' for men to dev..
And these two boys went up to the banyan-tree and began to
pelt it with sticks thrown end over end ; and while they were
pelting so the snakes fell down in very great numbers. And
Betawerai began to sing a song to make Walolo come quickly
back and kill and eat them. And this was the song, Bisuri.su
ratio, Betawerai, a lang togalaw, ti uvi goro nanagolcu. Walolo !
Walolo ! go ratio mai ! Walolo ! Walolo ! go vano mai ! Turn and
come to Betawerai, the wind is North-west, it blows ag'ainst
my face. Walolo, Walolo, come hither! Walolo, Walolo,
come hither! And they say that Walolo heard him singing,
and thought that something- had happened. And he came
end over end like a stick, and as he. came near he heard
plainly that it was Betawerai’s voice, and he thought that
indeed there was surely a man there. Therefore he came end
over end in haste, and came near to those two; and one of
them shot him, and then the other shot, and both hit him;
and he tried to rush upon them, and one shot, and the other
shot, and both hit. And they went on shooting like this, till
they shot him to death. And they went after Betawerai, and
pulled him down to the ground and killed him. And when
they had killed the snakes in this way they heaped them up
at the roots of the banyan-tree, and brought plenty of wood
and burned them up, a great heap of snakes, as a sign that
the devouring snake was destroyed. And they three (the
boys and their mother) returned to their village and dwelt
there.
12. The Story of Basi and Dovaowari. Aurora.
She was a girl of Dama, and her mother, a snake, lived in
a cave there. And there was a young man living at Tanoriki;
and one day Basi and another girl, her sister I suppose, went
down to the beach to dip salt-water; and Dovaowari was the
name of the youth, and he also went down to bathe in the sea,
but on another part of the beach. You know our ways, thatXIX.]
Basi.
4°5
we always like to dress our hair to make it white, and that the
hair too may be curly, in ringlets, such as you always see
with the Opa people. So these two girls stand looking over
to the other part of the beach, and see the fellow bathing, and
washing his hair till it was exceedingly white, and they say,
Let us two go and see who that is bathing. And they went
and saw that it was Dovaowari; and he asked them what
the]7 were looking for, and they said that thej7 had been
standing far off and had seen him, and were come to look at
him. And Basi said to the other girl, You go home to our
mother, and tell her that I am going after Dovaowari. But
Dovaowari forbade her in vain to follow him, saying that he
was poor, and not one that had money, that he had no
property and no garden ; and she disputed with him, saying
that she would certainly go with him. So he said, Well, we
will go together ; then that other girl went back to the mother
of them both, the Snake, and Basi followed Dovaowari to be
his wife, and so they married. But Basi kept going to her
mother at Darna a long way off, and Dovao was vexed at it,
and he told Basi to go and say to her mother that she was to
move to that place so that all might live together. But
Basi said, Mother cannot come here to this place; yet she
went and entreated her, and she agreed that it would be
possible to make the move. But the chief thing she thought
of was how she should manage, because she was a snake very
long and large, and if a small house were built for her it
would not be enough. She considered, therefore, and said to
Basi, Go and tell my son-in-law to build me a house, and let
there be ten chambers in it. But Dovao did not yet know the
truth, and when he heard about the house with ten chambers
he was astonished at it, and thought to himself, What is
this ? When the house was finished, Basi carried the news
saying, Your house is finished; but she had said beforehand,
I shall go in the night, and if my son-in-law should hear
anything don’t let him take notice of it. So in the middle of
the night they heard an earthquake, and thunder, and a very
great rumbling as if all the world would come to an end;406
Stories.
[ch.
and when she reached that place, her tail entered first and
coiled itself in the first chamber, and then in the second, until
all those chambers were filled with the big snake; and her
head, a woman’s, lay opposite the door, though the whole
house was full of the snake. In the morning the people came
to see this person, and saw that it was a snake with a human
head. And whenever Dovao and Basi went anywhere and re-
turned, she would go to her mother, that snake, and rub her
nose upon her, and lie close upon her; but her husband did not
like that sort of thing. On that account (and because the snake
devoured the pigs and fowls that came near the door), when
there was a feast at another village at a distance, he told some
of the people that he and his wife were going to the dance,
and while they were away they were to set fire to the house
and bum it so as to burn up the snake with it. But the snake
knew this, and called Basi and told her that they were going
to set fire upon her and burn her that night, and, When you
are standing at the feast, she said, if you see sparks run quickly
back to me. So it was done ; while she was dancing she saw
sparks flying and ran quickly back and leapt herself into the
fire, and both were burnt to death. And after a long while
the liver that was burnt was found, and still remains, the
liver of Basi and of her mother; and I have seen a bone in
possession of some wealthy people; there is viana, magic
power, in it, they say, for pigs, and for wicked intercourse
with women when they blacken their faces under the ej^es
with it
13. The Story of Deitare Aurora.
They say that Tari went into his garden to work, and as.he
was working something cut him, and he put the blood into a
bamboo vessel, and went into the village, and set it by his
1 The power of the liver to attract women was discovered by a boy playing
with his bow and arrow as his mother worked in the garden near where the
snake had been burnt. His arrow fell into the ashes of the liver, and seeing it
blackened he smeared his face with the black stuff.XIX.]
Deitari. Tarkeke.
407
fire-place, and there it stayed. And after many days when he
was going to work he told his wife to cook some food for him,
and she went to get it. But when she came back into the
house she found food already cooked, and she did not know
who had prepared the food for her. Thus it happened very
often, and the woman told her husband. And he when he
heard it hade her sit and watch who it was that did it. So
she sat by the side wall of the house, and saw Deitari (Tari’s
blood) creep out of the bamboo vessel which Tari had put
aside ; and she saw that he was exceedingly fair, and she hid
him. Then when Tari came in from work he asked his wife,
Haven’t you seen him ? And she said, What was that you
put by the fire-place ? I did not put anything there, said he.
But his wife said, Not so, you put something small there in a
bamboo. Then he remembered about his blood, and he said
to his wife, My blood was in that bamboo; and his wife
said, I saw him come out of that bamboo that you had put
there. So she brought him forth, and Tari rejoiced very
much to see him. And one day as they were living together
the boys of the village, and Deitari with them, went to bathe
in the stream, and sang songs. And there was a man called
Taepupuliti, and they say that he changed himself into a
fish, and went and devoured the boy who had come out
of the bamboo, and went off with him into a different
country. And Tari sent every kind of fish and bird to seek
for Deitari; and he found a little fish, extremely thin, and
this fish and Deitari’s father found him hidden at the back
end of Taepupuliti’s house. And they two, Tari and Taepu-
puliti, sat down to drink /cava ; and the father of the one
whom the other had devoured let the liquor fall from his
mouth as he drank, so that the Jcava did not strike (affect)
him; but as for the one who had eaten his child it struck
him very much, and his father carried him off again.
14. Tarkeke. Aurora.
They say that he used to devour men in all the islands, and
that he made the image of a fish with woven vines, and got4-oS
Stories.
[ch.
into it and turned into a fish. And when he wanted to eat a
man he entered into that fish and went to Opa or Raga.
One day he went into his garden, and his son was in the
village, and his father had forbidden the boy to go to the
inner part of the house ; but his father had gone away and
he and his mother were in the village, and he was playing
about alone, and he thought he would go and see what it was
that his father had forbidden him to see. So he went into
the further end of the house, and saw the image of the fish
lying, and got into it. And a kingfisher flies down as a sign
if any one gets into the figure of the fish ; and the old
woman lying in the house when she hears the kingfisher
breaks a stick, and the image then goes into the sea. And
when the boy got into the figure of the fish, and the king-
fisher flew down to the roof of the house, and the old woman
heard it, she broke a piece of fire-wood, and the image of
the fish with the boy inside it went down into the sea, and
crossed to Opa. And the father was in his garden and he
heard a noise, and he ran as fast as he could, but found that
the fish was already gone. So he weaves together the stuff
that is on a cocoa-nut, in no particular shape, and puts it on his
breast, and goes into the sea to seek the boy. And he finds
him at Opa; and the Opa people, they say, had very nearly
shot him. And his father brought him home. And as they
were coming back they saw a man in a bread-fruit-tree, and
the father said to his son, Go and eat him; and the son said
to his father, IIow shall I go, father, because he is on dry
land ? And his father hit him hard, and said, Go, for you
want to eat a man. Then he went, and as he went up
towards the shore the sea went up too upon the shore, and he
was carried up> into the bread-fruit-tree after that man and
swallowed him. And they came back to the back part of the
house, and put him there, for he was not yet dead. And
when they put him there at the further end of the house, and
he moved himself about, he saw the sea, and the shark, and
the fishes with their mouths open to devour him. And so he
stayed there and died.XIX.]
Tagciro and Mera-mbuto.
409
15. The Woman and the Ghost. Aurora.
This is about a woman who lost her husband, and went in
search of him, and she had a child with her. And a ghost
met the woman carrying the child on her hip, and the woman
thought it was her husband. And the three went down to
the beach to burn for fish. Then the ghost said to the
woman, You go and burn for fish, and I will look after our child.
And when the woman went with the torch the ghost ate one
finger of the child. And its mother asked him what hurt the
child, and the ghost said, Nothing, a mosquito bit it. After he
had spoken the child ceased to cry, and the woman discovered
that it was a ghost because it had eaten the child entirely up.
Then she knew for certain that it was a ghost, because she
had set up cocoa-nut branches along the shore, and the ghost
when it had eaten the child went to eat the mother, and as
he ran along to eat her he ate the branches she had set up,
thinking that the branches were the woman. And the woman
ran away fast and climbed into a pandanus-tree, and when the
ghost would have climbed up to eat her the woman pelted
him down with the fruits. And so she did till dawn ; and
when it was light she saw that he turned into a hermit crab.
16. A Story about Tagaro the Little.
Lepers’ Island.
They say that he went to a part of the island called
Vagimbangga to pay for a pig- there, and that on his return the
sun set while he was still in the forest. And he was hungry,
for he had nothing whatever to eat. Now beside that path
they say there was a single gaviga-tree, with many branches,
and also ripe fruit on it ; and he climbed up to eat, and to
sleep awhile on that tree ; and in his hand was his conch-
shell trumpet to blow as he went along the path. And in
the middle of the night, when he had finished eating, he
climbed further up to the top of that gaviga-tree to sleep and
rest there ; and as he begins to fall asleep he hears the voices4io
Stories.
[CH.
of a number of people coming along underneath the gaviga-
tree. And he woke up thinking that it was probably his
brothers looking for him; but it was not so, these were
different persons; these were Mera-mbuto and his brothers
coming along, and they climbed up the gaviga-tree them-
selves. And Tagaro-mbiti sits perfectly still lest they should
see him, and he hears one of them say ‘Ineu ranganggu ngaha,’
This is my branch, and another cries ‘Ineu ranganggu ngaha',
and so say all of them. Then says Mera-mbuto 1 Ineu ranganggu
ngaha lo vuhungegi,’ This is my branch at the top; and this
he said with a loud voice. And Mera-mbuto climbed straight
up to the top of that gaviga-tree, and there he found Tagaro-
mbiti. Then says Mera-mbuto. Who are you ? And says he,
I am Tagaro-mbiti. Now they say that this Mera-mbuto and
his brothers had a cave for their dwelling. And he asked
Tagaro again, What is that in your hand ? And he says, The
voice of you and me to be sure. And he begged of him to
speak in that conch that he might hear it; but he said also,
Wait a bit till I go back to my dwelling-place, and when I
get there you will hear me whistle ; then you shall speak with
the voice of us two that I may hear it for myself. And he
made haste down from the tree, and his brothers said, Are we
to come too ? No, says he, I am only going to get rid of a
mess and then I shall come back. Thus he deceived them;
and when he reached his dwelling, the cave, he whistled
for Tagaro to hear, that he might blow the conch. And
Tagaro heard Mera-mbuto whistle, and he put forth all his
strength to blow the conch hard, and he blew, and Mera-
mbuto’s brothers fell every one of them from the tree ; and he
himself was delighted and jumped high again and again in
his cave, and his head struck against the rock, and the rock-
stuck fast into his head, and there he died. And his brothers
who had fallen down died every one ; and on that account
they say that bushes grew up in that place where Mera-
mbuto’s brothers fell. And when it was light Tagaro-mbiti
returned to his home.SIX.]
Mera-mbuto and Tagaro.	411
17. About Meka-mbuto and Tagaeo. Lepees’ Island.
Mera-mbuto prepared food for himself, and then he invited
Tagaro to come that they might eat together. So Tagaro
came to him in his house ; and the food of Mera-mbuto was
exceedingly bad, and as they ate Tagaro did not eat at all, but
he wrapped the food up to deceive Mera-mbuto, and went and
threw it away, and then went back to his house. Afterwards
Tagaro sent after him saying, Mera-mbuto, come here to mjr
house. Mera-mbuto came and they two ate. And the food
was good ; Mera-mbuto liked Tagaro’s food very much ; he had
made his own not at all good. So Mera-mbuto considered
silently, What sort of thing is this we two are eating ? So he
asked Tagaro, and Tagaro said to him, I have grated up my
barrow pig. So Mera-mbuto went and grated up his barrow
pig, and in due course they two ate it. After this Tagaro
invited Mera-mbuto to eat with him in return in his house.
So he asked him again, What food is this we two are eating ?
And Tagaro was tired of being asked, and deceived Mera-mbuto,
saying to him, My mother; I cooked her in the oven. So
Mera-mbuto went home and cooked his mother in the oven.
After this Tagaro said to him, Light a fire over me. So
Mera-mbuto came, and tied up the door of Tagaro’s house,
bound it very tight, and set fire to Tagaro’s house. Then
Tagaro wept; Mera-mbuto said to him, Don’t cry, you deceived
me formerly, now you are soon to die for it. He thought that
Tagaro was dead; but not at all, he had dug a hole, and
stayed in it. In the morning thinking that he was dead he
came, and Tagaro had been long sitting ready for him. So
Mera-mbuto asked him, Are you sitting like this ? Tagaro
said, Yes. So Mera-mbuto said to him, My turn now, to-night
you set fire to my house. So Tagaro set fire to his house, and
the fire burnt him up.INDEX.
Abomination, buto, p. 31.
Abortion, 229.
Acting, 342.
Admission to Clubs, 105.
—	to Mysteries, 80.
Adoption, 25, 27, 42, 51 note.
Adultery, 243.
Agnatic descent, 29.
Alite, 298, 325.
Alligators, see Crocodiles.
Ambrym, 13, 72> 84, 144, 174? 288
note, 306, 332, 337, 355.
Amulets, 121, 134, 184.
Anaiteum, 123.
Animism, 123.
Antiquity, 48.
Apes, anthropoid, 19 note, 354.
Araga, see Pentecost Island.
Arrows, Poisoned, 215, 306.
Arts of life, 290.
—	Decorative.
Atai, 250.
Atolls, 17.
Aurora Island, Maewo, 6, 25, 86, 112,
143, 168, 182, 199, 201, 240, 291,
298. 3°9. 3i3. 319. 323, 333, 34°,
352> 369,
Australian Mysteries, 70.
Avoidance, 43, 232.
Badges, 75, 82, 87, no, 112.
Bamboo Knife, 315.
Bananas, 319.
Banks’ Islands, 2, 3, 4, 7 note, 16, 23,
24,29,35,43,54,63,72,75, io4)
123, 139, 146, 151, 174, 181, 198,
211, 214, 216, 219, 225, 229, 231,
236,239,245,265,298,306,311,
313,318,319,322,325,333,334,
34°, 342> 348, 353, 354-
Bastards, 236.
Bauro, 4 note, 6 note.
Belief in Magic, 193.
Bellona Island, 2, 16, 313, 322.
Betel nut, 1, 9 note, 351.
Betrothal, 237, 238.
Bice, Kev. C., 241 note, 301 note, 304
note.
Bird’s-nest Fern, 265, 277, 279.
Birgus latro, 19.
Birth, 230.
Biu Island, 19.
Bligh, 4, 7 note.
—	Island, see Ureparapara.
Bonesetters, 198.
Bonito, 179, 233.
Bougainville, 3.
Boundaries, 65 note.
Bows, 8, 304.
Bowls, 316.
Breadfruit, 83 note, 319.
Brenchley, Mr., 5, 122, 295, 299 note.
Bridge of Dead, 257.
Brothers and Sisters, 36, 232.
Bugotu, 30, 135, 180, 196, 256, 299,
3°°, 3°2i 3j8, 343> 345-
Bull-roarers, 80, 98, 342.
Burial, 254, 257, 258, 261, 263, 267,
270, 278, 284, 287, 288 note.
Burning alive, 347.
—	the dead, 263.
Burying alive, 288, 347.
—	in sea, 254, 258, 262.
—	wives, 257.
Buto, 31.
Caladium, 304 ; see Taro.
Canarium, 132, 138, 320.
Cannibalism, 343, 395 note, 398.
Canoe-houses, 258, 299.
Canoes, 290.
Capture in Marriage, 238 note, 240.4H
Index.
Carving, 172.
Castanets, 339.
Castaways, 345.
Casuarina, 186.
Catamarans, 293 note, 294.
Cat’s-cradle, 341.
Cause of Sickness, 196.
Celebes, 317 note.
Changeling Snakes and Spirits, 172,
187, 188.
—	Trees, 187.
Channels, 16.
Charms in food, 49.
—	sung, 119, 161, 190, 19S, 202, 359,
395-
Chastity, 235.
Chiefs, 46, 47, 50, 51, 54, 56, 60.
Childhood, 231.
Childless Ghost, 275.
Children in Societies, 70,Si, 84, 92,98.
Circumcision, 234.
Classes of Ghosts, 253.
Cloak in Mysteries, 7S, 81 note, 91, 99.
Close-time in Mysteries, 83, 95.
Cloth, 320.
Clothing, 321.
Club-houses, 102.
Clubs, 306.
—	Societies, 101, 103, 104, no, 112,
114.
Cockatoos, 17-
Cocoa-nut, to mark absence, 77.
Comet, 348.
Com ins, Rev. R. B., 42 note.
Communal Marriage, 27.
Contraridite Island, see Ulawa.
Cook, Capt., 4.
Cookery, 319.
Coral, 14.
Cotoira, 2 note, 9 note.
Counting, 341, 353, 377.
—	days, 272.
—	song, 341.
C'ouvade, 228.
Creation, 26, 28, 154, 171.
Cremation, 263.
Crocodiles, 18, 179, 1S0.
Cultivations, 303.
Curses, 51, 147, 216.
Cuscus, 17.
Cycas, 186.
Dances, 84, 87, 91, 93, 95, 332.
Darkness universal, 182.
Death, 247.
—	Days, 271.
—	Meals, see Funeral Feasts.
—	Origin of, 260, 265.
Decorations, in, 116, 386.
Decorative Arts, 328.
Deliverance Feast, 112.
Descent in Family, 22, 41.
—	to Hades, 277, 286.
—	of Property, 59.
Destruction of Property after Death,
255, 263, 285.
Devil, 117, 122.
Discoveries, 2, 8.
Diseases, 12 note.
Disposing of corpses, 267, 269.
Divination, 196, 210.
Division of People, 21, 24, 400.
Divorce, 244.
Doctors, 195.
Dreamers, 20S.
Dreams, 208, 249, 266.
Dress, 107, 23T, 234, 241, 321.
Drill, 325.
Driving Ghosts, 270.
Drums, 175, 336.
Dugong, 318.
Dulcchik, 69.
Dye, 322> 323-
Ear ornaments, 330.
Ears pierced, 232, 265 note, 280.
Eclipses, 348.
Eels, 18, 318.
Elevation of land, 16.
Elopement, 240.
Enclosures, 84, 86.
Entrance to Clubs, 105.
—	to Hades, 273.
—	to Mysteries, see Initiation.
—	payments, 81,84, 92, 103,106,115.
Espiritu Santo, 3, 6, S, 17, 306, 315.
Exclusion of Women, 1 28
Exogamy. 21, 24, 29, 34.
Exorcism, 220.
Fagani, see Ha’ani.
Fainting, 260, 287.
Familiar Spirits, 142.
Family, 25, 26, 34, 68.
—	System, 35, 40.
Fasting, 107, 205.
Feasts, 104, 108, no, 112.
—	funeral, 255, 259, 261, 264, 271,
273, 280, 282, 284, 287.
Feather-money, 324.
Fenua loa, 17.
Fighting, 305.
Figure-heads, 296.
Figures in Mysteries, 87, 96.
Fiji, 2, 22 note, 34, 43, 48, 59, 61
note, 64 note, 69, 72, 122, 147
note, 19S note, 246 note, 248, 315,
3T9> 340-Index.
4i5
Fines, 30, 52.
Fingers, counting on, 353.
Fire, 320.
First-fruits, 95, 133, 138, 139.
Fishing, 316.
—	hooks, 316.
—	floats, 317.
—	kites, 318.
—	nets, 317, 358.
—	traps, 318.
Fison. Rev. Lorimer, 22 note, 48 note,
59 note, 61 note, 64 note, 72, 122,
147, 198, 246 note, 24S.
Flies, 18.
Floats, 317.
Flood, 166.
Florida Island, 3, 5 note, 16, 23, 29,
4°. 6l> 73, 94, 124, I3°, 145, J74>
175, 1S0, 194, 200, 209, 210, 214,
215, 217, 21S, 235, 237, 242, 249,
254> 257> 295> 3°°, 3°5> 325< 333,
337, 343, 345, 34s, 352> 353, 354-
Flutes, 339.
—	iEolian, 340.
Food, 319.
—	fragments of, 203.
—	offered to Dead, 128,147; 259, 271,
283.
—	of Ghosts, 260, 286, 28S.
Forbes, Mr., 186 note, 262 note.
Forts, 302.
Fowls, 10, 18.
Fragments of food, 203.
Frigate-birds, 126,145, 179, 180, 257.
Frogs, 17.
Fruit-trees, property in, 61, 62, 65,
68.
Funeral feasts, see Feasts.
—	oration, 268.
Funerals, 268, 281, 284, 287-
Futuna Island, 8, 15.
Gallego, 2 note, 5 note, 8.
Gamed, 101, 113, 298.
Games, 340.
Gardens, 59, 68, 303, 349.
—	Spirits, 134.
Gaua, Santa Maria, 3, 13? *7>
105, 166, 189, 268, 302.
Geology, 13.
Gera, Gela, 5, 16.
Ghost-shooters, 205.
Ghosts, 11, 120, 125, 194,	247>
253, 260, 288.
—	Societies of, 75.
Ginger, 133, 180, 195, I97> 20°‘
Gods, 122, 124.
Grafting, 304.
Graves, 257.
Guadalcanar, 5, 327, 354.
Guest-wives, 24.
Gulf Island, see Ugi.
Guppy, Dr., 2 note, 5 note, 9 note, 19,
263 note, 290, 294 note, 299 note,
317 note.
Ha’ani, 173, 294, 301.
Hades, 255, 256, 260, 264, 273, 280,
285, 287, 367, 395.
Harlots, 235.
Hats, 69, 77, 85, 104.
Haunting Ghosts, 255, 258, 261, 264,
267, 288.
Head, 43, 45, 233 note.
—	hunting, 345.
—	taking, 257, 297, 301, 345.
Heaps of Stones, 185.
Heavenly Bodies, 348.
Hereditary Succession, 50, 55, 56.
Hickson, Dr., 317 note.
Hot Springs, 13.
House-mounds, 48, 66, 68, 301.
House-sites, 61, 65, 301.
Houses, 298.
Human Sacrifices, 134, 297, 301.
Idols, 173.
Images, 105, no, 173, 259.
Implements, 313.
Incest, 23, 30.
Infancy, 230.
Infanticide, 229.
Inheritance, 50, 59, 64 note, 65, 67,
68.
Initiation, 70, 80, 84, 86, 8S, 92, 97,
233-
Intercourse of Sexes, 23, 235.
Invocations, 50, 145, 148.
Iron, 313.
Irregular intercourse, 23, 235.
Irrigation, 303.
Jew’s-harps, 339.
Joske, Mr., 72.
Journey of the Dead, 256, 279, 285.
Judgment after Death, 256, 257,
269,274.
Kahausibware, 150.
Kava, 1, 3, 351.
Kema, 30, 33.
Kindreds, 24, 29.
Kingfishers, 147, 190, 221, 257.
Kinship, 21, 37, 40, 41.
Kissing, 354.
Kites, 342.
—	fishing, 318.
—	song, 336.416
Index.
Koevasi, 21.
Kolelcole, no, 392.
Lagoons, 17-
Lakes, 17, 166.
Lakona, Santa Maria, 13, 66, 86, 157)
266, 272, 275, 293 note, 318, 341.
Land, 29, 50, 59, 61, 65 note.
—	reclaimed from forest, 61, 62, 64,
67-
Lang, Mr. A., 91.
La Perouse, 4.
Lepers’ Island, 3, 14, 24, 26, 45, 56,
67, x 13, 170, 183, 199, 201, 207,
210, 213, 214, 21S, 223, 229, 230,
232, 236, 322, 323, 337, 344, 347,
348. 353. 355. 371*
Levirate, 244.
Libations, 128, 147-
License at Feasts, 27.
—	of Societies, 83. 98.
Lifting brides, 238, 242.
Lizards, 180.
Lodges, 72, 77.
Looms, 10, 20, 316, 321.
Lopevi, 13.
Loyalty Islands, 1, 15, 324.
Madagascar, 21.
Madness, 218.
Mae, Three Hills.
Maewo, see Aurora Island.
Magic, 191.
—	Sympathetic, 200, 214, 310.
Magicians, 191.
Mala, Malaita, Malanta, 3, 4, 5, 16,
33, .33°; 345; 346-
—	Paina and Masiki, 16.
Malanta, see Saa.
Malicolo, 3.
Man, making of, 21, 157, 167, 171.
—	in Moon, 348,
Mann, 51, £7, 90, 103. 115, 119, 191,
200, 307.
Manslaughter, 133.
Mara, see Mala.
Marawa, 152, 157, 373, 383 note.
Marina, Espiritu Santo.
Marriage, 23, 27, 37, 238, 240, 242.
Masks, 69, 72, 77, S3, 96.
Mat, 316.
—	money, 323.
Matmnbala, 69, 94.
Mateina Group, 17.
Maternal Descent, 2 r.
Matriarchal System, 34.
Max Muller, Prof., 118 note.
Measures, 353.
Medicine, 195.
Megapod, 17.
Mendana, 2, 9.
Meralava, Star Island.
Merig, Sainte Claire Island.
Merlav, Star Island.
Messer, Dr. R. N., 307 note.
Metamorphosis, 207.
Mission Voyages, 10 note.
Money, 63, 66, 323.
—	feather, 324.
—	lending, 326.
—	mat, 323.
—	shell, 325.
Months, 349.
Moon, 348.
—	Man in, 348.
Mosquitos, 18.
Mota, Sugarloaf Island, 11, 15, 18,
25. 35; I04> 147, 158, 223, 250,
266, 292, 337, 340, 342, 346, 347,
349. 353, 379-
Mother-in-law, 42.
Motlav, Saddle Island, 25, 47, 48, 55,
66, 146, 181, 2ii, 249, 268, 274.
Mourning, 245, 282.
Music, 337.
Musical Instruments, 336.
Mysteries, 69.
Names of Islands, 4, 5 note, 7.
—	new personal, 87, 94, 114.
—	not mentioned, 43.
Nanga of Fiji, 69, 72.
Narcotics, 351.
Native Names of Islands, 4, 5, 7.
Ndeni, Santa Cruz, 5.
Nearness in blood, 29.
Nets, 317.
New Caledonia, 2, 13, 69, 73.
New Hebrides, 2, 3, 6, 24, 56, 67, 72,
84, 86, T24, 143, 148, 151,199, 240,
29], 298, 309, 313, 319, 337, 340,
342> 344. 345. 348, 351. 353. 355-
Nggela, Florida, 16.
Night, 156, 171.
Nitendi, 5.
Nopit11, 153.
Nose-rings, 231, 256.
Nufilole Island, 17.
Oaths, 217.
Oba, Omba, Opa, see Lepers’ Island.
Offerings, 127.
Olu Malau Islands, Three Sisters, 5
note.
Omens, 220.
Ordeals, 212.
Origin of Chiefs power, 51, 56, 116,
167.Index.
417
Origin of Death, 260, 265, 283, 286.
—	of Kindreds, 26.
—	of Man, 21, 26.
Original Self, 253.
Ornamentation, 32S.
Ornaments buried, 254, 263, 26S.
Ovens, 320.
Owa-raha and -rii, 5 note.
Paddles, 297.
Palmer, Rev. J., 14, Si note, 83 note,
199 note, 201 note, 268 note, 269 note.
Palolo, 350.
Panoi, 264 ; see Hades.
Panpipes, 337.
Paternal Descent, 22, 41, 50.
Path of the Dead, 256, 275, 278, 285.
Patriarchal System, 22, 41, 50, 68.
Patteson, Bishop, 4 note, 6 note, 9,
10 note, 11, 12 note, 74 note, 85
note, 121 note, 144, 166, 294 note,
301, 302.
Pedigree of Mota family, 3 7.
Penny, Rev. A., 99 note, 176 note,
257 note, 356.
Pentecost Island, Whitsuntide Island,
Araga,3,26, 45,48,67,92,114,169,
183, 187,188, 199, 209, 228,230,
240, 253, 286, 311, 323, 344, 347.
Personal Property, 63, 66, 67.
Pigs, 57 note, 249.
—	souls of, 249, 263, 269.
—	world, 286.
Pile-houses, 300.
Piper methysticum, Kava, 3^1.
Pipes, 337, 352.
Pitcairn Island, 342.
Places, Sacred, 173.
Plant, Rev. J. H., 238 note.
Poison, 213.
Poisoned Arrows, 306, 368.
Polyandry, 245.
Polygamy, 39, 245.
Polynesian Colonies, 2, 322.
Possession, 153, 209, 218, 224.
Pottery, 315.
Power of Chiefs, 47, 51, 56, 116, 167.
Prayer, 127, 145, 148.
Priests, 128, 132.
Primogeniture, 64.
Property, 33, 50, 59.
—	personal, 63, 66, 67.
—	in trees, 61, 65 note, 68.
Prophecy, 209.
Public Halls, 102.
Qat, 11, 21, 22, 154. 156, 397, 398.
—	Society, 69, 75, 84, 86.
Quiros, 2, 5, 7, note.
Rainbow, 341.
Rainmaking, 200.
Ranks in Societies, 103, 104,113, 115,
385. 391-
Rattles, 342.
Reclaimed Land, 61, 62, 64, 67.
Red, 183.
Redemption of Land, 65.
Reef Islands, 17.
Reef Islands of Santa Cruz, 2, 6, 9,
17. 23	34<S-
Reflection, 250.
Relation of Brother and Sister, 36.
—	by Marriage, 37.
—	“ Polygamy, 39-
—	of Sister’s son, 24.
Relationship, 35.
Relics, 126, 134, 258, 262.
Religion, 117, 123.
Rennell Island, 2, 16, 313.
Reserve, 42, 232, 242.
Respect, 45.
Restriction on intercourse of sexes,
23> 43-
—	on Marriage, 30.
Retainers, 52, 58.
Romilly, Mr., 307.
Rowa Island, 7, 17, 298, 327.
Rubbing noses, 354.
Saa, Malanta, 48, 63, 124, 136, 176,
191, 209, 212, 216, 219, 221, 230,
2337 235. 238, 250, 260, 288, 299,
3°5> 3ifi, 336, 344, 349, 352> 353,
355*
Sacred Places and Things, 173, 177.
Sacrifices, 128, 144 note.
—	in Ambrym, 144.
—	in Aurora Island, 143.
—	in Banks’ Islands, 139.
—	of First Fruits, 132, 138, 139.
—	in Florida, 130.
—	Human, 134.
—	in Lepers’ Island, 144.
—	in New Hebrides, 139.
—	in Pentecost Island, 143.
—	at Saa, 136.
—	in San Cristoval, 129, 138.
—	at Santa Cruz, 139.
—	in Ysabel, 135.
Saddle Island, see Motlav and Valuu a.
Sago, 319.
Salagoro, 73, 77.
Sale of Land, 50, 60, 65 note.
Salt, 311 note.
Salutations, 354, 394.
San Cristoval Island, 3, 4, 12 note,
17, 41, 42 note, 51 note, 124, 129,
138,146,150,177,179,190,196,4iS
Index.
228, 229, 235, 245, 294, 299, 303,
3°5> 3i8, 325> 329> 333, 33^, 344.
345. 352-
Santa Ana Island, 5 note.
Santa Catalina Island, 5 note.
Santa Cruz Island, 2, 3, 5, 9, 17. 18,
20, 43, 59, 63, 139, 167, 174, 1S0,
196, 201, 231, 232, 239, 249 note,
263, 293, 301, 312, 313, 317, 319,
32i, 324: 333.342, 348,35i-
Santa Maria Island, 3, 7, 13, 85, 86,
105, 166, 189, 268, 302, 351. See
Lakona.
Santo, Espiritu Santo.
Savo, 3, 5, 13, 18, 179,206,214,255,
345-
Saw, 315 note.
Sea-ghosts, 196, 258.
Seasons, 349.
Seclusion in Mysteries, 81,84, 86, 93,
95, 100.
Secret Societies, 54, 69, 74 note, 75,
76, 86, 91, 94.
Selwyn, Bishop, 6 note, 10 note.
—	Bishop John, 9, 14, 17, 95, 125,
204, 239 note, 282 «o£e, 298 no/e,
303
Separation of Sexes, 43, 232.
Sesarga Island, 5.
Shadow, 176, 209, 247, 250.
Sharks, 126, 179, 187, 259.
—	fishing for, 318.
Shell Implements, 16, 313.
—	Money, 325.
Shields, 305.
Ship of the Dead, 326 note.
—	first seen, 352 note.
Slirines, 126, 130, 175, 177.
Sickness, T94.
‘ Side of House,’ 25.
Sister’s son, 34, 41, 380, 400.
Slaves, 346.
Slings, 305.
Snakes, 18, 178, 187, 199.
Sneezing, 40, 211, 226.
Social Regulations, 20, 46.
Societies, Clubs, 101, 103, 104, no,
114, 115.
Sogoi, 25.
Solomon Islands, 2, 3, 5 note, 22, 40,
94, 124, 129, 173, 294, 309, 313,
3*6, 317. 3i9. 339- 342> 343, 348,
35 C 352, 353-
Songs, 85,93, 334-
—	Dialect, 334.
Soul, 247, 267.
Sounds in Mysteries, So, S3, 95.
Spanish Discoveries, 2.
—	Names, 4.
Spears, 305.
Spells, 147.
Spirits, 120, 123, 125, 134, 14°. i5°>
151, 168, 248.
Star Island, Meralava, 6, 7, T4> 3°3-
Stars, 348.
Stepfather, 40.
Stone-boiling, 315.
—	buildings, 302.
—	implements, 16, 313.
Stones, 119, 140, 143, 151, I^9, 175>
178, 180, 183, 185.
Stories, 356.
Streams, 177, 186.
Stringed Instrument, 339.
Succession of Chiefs, 53, 55, 56.
—	of Property, 29, 59, 61, 63, 66, 67,
68.
Sugarloaf Island, Mota.
Suicide, 243.
Sumatra, 186 note.
Sun, 200, 348, 365.
—	making, 184, 201.
Sup we Spirit, 168.
Suqe Club, 102, 11 2, 114, 385, 390.
Surf-board, 341.
Surville, 4.
Swallow Group, 2, 17.
Swearing, 217.
Sympathetic Magic, 200, 214, 310.
System of Relationship, 35.
Taboo, tambu, tapu, 31, 63, 77> 82,
94, 182, 215.
Tagaro, 21, 168, 369.
Tamate, 69, 72, 75, 266.
Taro, 304, 319.
Tas, 17, 186.
Tattoo, 232, 234, 237, 240, 241, 331.
Taumako, 5.
Teeth, dog and porpoise, 325.
Terms of Relationship, 35, 40.
Tetanus, 312.
Thanks, 354.
Thatch, 299.
Three Hills Island, 330, 355.
Three Sisters Island, 5 note.
Tikopia, 1, 6 note, 17, 319, 346, 351.
Timor, 186 note, 262 note.
Tinakula, 13.
Tindalo, 125, 249.
Tobacco, 352.
Tonga, 303, 321,343.
Tools, 16, 313.
Tops, 242.
Torres, 2.
Torres Islands, 3, 7, 16, 75, 104, 111,
224, 231, 264, 293 note, 306 note,
307, 3°8> 313, 327, 35C 373-Index.
4t9
Totems, 32.
Town lots, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67.
Toys, 342.
Trade, 297.
Tradition, absence of, 47.
Translation of Relics, 126.
Treatment of Wounds, 310.
Tree-houses, 301.
Trees cut down at death, 255, 263,
385.
—	property in, 61, 65, 68.
—	sacred, 1S6.
Trials of the Dead, 256, 257, 265 note,
275, 280, 287.
Tribes, 21, 33 note.
Tricks of Ghosts, 223.
Twins, 230.
Ugi, Gulf Island, 5.
(Jlawa, Contrari^te Island, 3, 5, 32,
179,180,235,294,343,346.
Ureparapara, Bligh Island, 13, 81, 84,
114, 269, 272, 298 note.
Yaluwa, Saddle Island, 185, 186, 205.
Vampires, 221.
Vanikoro Island, 4.
Vanua Lava, Great Banks’ Islands,
", 13. 17, 43, 14', 303, 306 note,
375-
Variety of Flowers and Plants, 304.
Vat Ganai, 7 note.
Vava, Torres Islands.
Veve, 24, 28.
Vigonci, 151.
Villages, 59, 61, 66.
Visitors, appearance of, 1 o-
Volcanos, 13.
Vui, 123, 151.
Wandering Ghosts, 219.
Washing, 84, 86, 93, 320.
Water, sacred, 177, 186.
Weaning, 231.
Weapons, 304.
Weather Doctors, 184, 200.
—	Spirits, 134.
Whistling, 342.
Widowhood, 245.
Wild Men, 19 note} 354-
Wills, 66, 68.
Winged Women, 172, 397-
Witchcraft, 191, 202.
Wizards, 192.
Women, exclusion of, 69, 74, 87, 92,
94, 103-
—	Clubs, 110.
—	Dress, 234, 241, 321.
Woodford, Mr., 2 note, 5 note, 9 note
132 note.	1
Words forbidden, 44.
World, 11.
Worship, 124.
Yams, 319, 367.
Ysabel Island, 3, 4 note, ->0
1S0, 196, 256, 299, 300 ’ *35> 175,
343.345.34s-	’ 3 2> 318,
Zoology, 17.
THE END.

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